


Between Two Worlds

by Lynzee005



Category: Fringe, Twin Peaks
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon Compliant, Crossover, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 36,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4309476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Fringe team discovers that not everything is as it seems in the pristine town of Twin Peaks, Washington...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image credit: Rinaldo Zoontjes (https://twitter.com/RinaldoZoontjes, https://www.instagram.com/RinaldoZoontjes/) Check out his stuff. He is incredible!

_It was a dream Olivia had been having, in one form or another, for years. She was so familiar with the rooms, their colours and layout, the types of furniture and where they were placed. She could have drawn it in her sleep…_

_She always started off walking down a long hallway, painted in a shade approaching avocado green but not quite making it there, stuck somewhere between mint and chartreuse. She ran a hand along the wall. It was freezing cold. She shivered and continued to walk._

_At the far end of the hallway, a set of double doors stood open. The cool green walls gave way to the rich velvet of fine drapery in crimson cast. She could hear music playing; it seemed to come out from between the drapes. As she approached, the lights above her head began to flicker, randomly at first and then with the kind of pulsing regularity that screamed out with intelligent intent at its source._

_Still, bravely undeterred, she continued to walk._

_The curtains were within her grasp. Pushing her way through, she paused only once in the strobe-lit hallway, the music filling the space around her, before shoving the panels aside and entering the room. A white and black zig-zag floor and red curtains all the way around, it reminded her of a school yard joke—"What's white and black and red all over?"—but she didn't laugh._

_She expected to see the man but, instead, in the middle of the room stood a woman; young-looking, with tears in her eyes. She wore a black dress that hung heavy on her petite frame; her hair was styled and curled around her face, beautifully even, but she seemed so sad. Olivia reached for her, hoping to help, but as the woman opened her mouth to speak, no words came out; her lips, forming a perfect, ruby-red 'O', let forth the most bone-chillingly fierce shrieks Olivia had ever heard._

_Frightened, Olivia tried to turn and run. But her feet remained rooted to the floor…_

* * *

"Agent Farnsworth, have you ever gone fly fishing?"

Dr. Walter Bishop lumbered from the bunsen burner to the table, carrying a beaker of coffee in his gloved hands. He poured it into a mug with the periodic table of elements printed on it, grasped it with both hands, and took a gulp.

Astrid Farnsworth, knowing full well what she had just cleaned out of those beakers that morning, grimaced as she watched him drink. "Walter, I bought you a coffee maker, remember?"

He gaped at her for a moment before speaking. "Well…yes, yes, but there's something about the process that unsettles me. This—" he motioned to his mug with a smile, "This is a thing of perfection."

Astrid shrugged and continued to fiddle with the laptop computer in front of her. "Well, to answer your question: no. I have never gone fly fishing."

"It is exhilarating," Walter continued. "You must try it."

Astrid smiled. "One day, Walter," she told him. With a final click, she sat up and cracked her fingers. "But until then, I suggest you get familiar with your email inbox."

Walter screwed up his face. "I don't know why I need an email account."

"You've had one for as long as you've been working here."

He shot her a puzzled look. "I have?"

She nodded. "Yes. And it's full. And people are sending you information requests and having their messages bounced back to them undeliverable  _because_  it's full, and Agent Broyles is getting an earful about it. So, he asked me to help you learn." She smiled at him, sympathy on her face. " Really, it's not such a bad thing to be connected. Or to at least check in once in a while."

Walter's face softened and he took another big gulp from his coffee mug before trudging over to the computer and peering into the screen. "What do I do?"

Astrid smile. "Well, I've already deleted all the old emails. But you should learn how to check and read and reply to them so that, from now on, you'll have a means of communication that fits better with the twenty-first century."

Walter scowled at Astrid's sly dig, but he sat down beside her, coffee mug in hand, awaiting his tutorial.

"Now, when you get an email—" Astrid began, cut off as the screen refreshed and a new email popped up in the inbox. "Hey, whaddya know?"

"Who is it from?" Walter asked.

Astrid glanced at the 'From' line. "Doctor Lawrence Jacoby."

"Ah!" Walter beamed, pulling on the laptop screen so it faced him. "He's an old friend of mine! How does he know my email address?"

Astrid laughed and showed Walter how to click on the link that opened the text of the email, then set about tidying up while Walter read the correspondence. "Don't touch anything," she instructed. "I'll show you how to reply when you're finished. You know how to type, don't you?" The question seemed simple, but Astrid was unsettled. "Oh dear…I don't know if I can teach you to type…"

But Walter was silent. His eyes misted with concern and as he peered through his glasses at the screen, he inched forward in his seat.

"Walter?" Astrid asked. "Is everything okay?"

Walter nodded but couldn't tear his eyes from the message. "Agent Farnsworth, be a dear and get Peter on the phone…"

* * *

FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham walked a few steps behind Peter Bishop as they entered the Harvard lab where Peter's father had set up shop.

"What's cooking?" Peter asked.

"I made coffee…" Walter offered, helpfully.

Peter sighed. "I meant it figuratively but…okay, I guess I deserved that."

"Walter," Olivia tried, "Astrid said you needed us here?"

"Oh!" Walter said. "Yes. I received an email today—"

"An email?" Peter glanced at Astrid. "You finally taught him how to use his email?"

Astrid smiled. "I'm not just a pretty face, Peter."

"Clearly," he jabbed his thumb in her direction and winked at Olivia. "You guys should put her on the hunt for Bigfoot."

Olivia grinned, but her mind was distracted by whatever it was that Walter initially needed them for. "Walter?"

"Yes. Right. The email was from an old friend, Doctor Lawrence Jacoby. We went to school together—he studied neuroscience, and I studied biochemistry, but we were in the same fraternity and—" he shook his head, cutting himself off before anyone else did. "He has a psychiatric practice in Washington State. He emailed me today because there has been an…" he trailed off, flicking his fingers with excitement as he searched for the words or the phrase to use to explain himself. "Well," he finally spoke, "There's been a rather unusual death."

"Why would he contact you?" Peter asked. "Or do small town psychiatrists always take it upon themselves to investigate suspicious deaths?"

"He knows I'm involved with the FBI, for starters."

"But deaths, no matter how suspicious, don't usually fall under the purview of the FBI," Peter countered.

"Yes, yes, I know," Walter's huffed. "But it's the  _nature_ of the death that interests me."

Olivia narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

Walter's eyes gleamed. "The girl was, by all accounts,  _frightened_  to death."

"Frightened," Peter restated. "To death."

"Precisely," Walter said. "By someone, or something, three days ago in a supermarket in this town. And," he added, "It's not the first time this has happened. Twenty years ago, the very same thing…"

Peter stood up from his perch on the edge of the lab bench. "I still don't see the relevance—"

"Peter," Walter's voice was serrated. "Listen to me. The body weighed eighty pounds after her death. From over one-thirty to eighty." He took a deep breath, trying to force himself to calm down. "It's as if half of her disappeared the moment she died."

Olivia glanced at Peter and then back at Walter. "You say this happened before?"

"Yes," Walter said, excited. "And the FBI was involved at that time. There should be records."

Olivia was already halfway out the door. "I'll talk to Broyles."

* * *

Special Agent Philip Broyles steepled his fingers and eyed Olivia curiously. "And you think this is something worthy of our time? Considering everything else we have on our plate?"

"I know it's a stretch, sir, but yes I feel there's a connection."

He looked down at his desk. "I'm surprised you have this information so quickly. We were only just notified an hour ago."

Olivia shifted from one foot to the other. "The fact that you were notified should say something, shouldn't it?"

Broyles seemed unconvinced. "How did you hear about it?"

"Walter is friends with a psychiatrist out there, and this doctor contacted him this afternoon."

Broyles nodded. "Well this psychiatrist's information is impeccable. He should be working for us."

Olivia managed a half-grin. "Can I have it, sir?"

"Why do you want it so bad?"

Olivia wavered. She considered telling him about the dreams, about the way they'd started when she was a first-year recruit at the Academy, about how she felt whenever she woke up following her visions, like there was something she had been tasked to do. Instead, she swallowed the words away.

"I know this case. When the rest of my cohort were studying serial killers like Bundy and Dahmer and Manson, I pored over every resource I could get my hands on trying to understand this very case. Missing FBI agents, murdered prom queens—it was like a soap opera. And the hints of the occult, references to spirits and portals…the city has its own mythology, rooted in the stories of the Native Americans and the very land itself…"

When it didn't appear that Broyles was particularly moved, Olivia tried a different tack.

"What if there was more to it than simply murder? What if there was a…supernatural element to it? This place could be related to the Pattern we've been seeing."

"You believe that?"

Olivia stabbed a finger at the file on Broyles' desk. "How do you explain the weight loss? The cause of death? Extreme fright?" She stood up again. "Does that sound like a normal case to you?"

Broyles looked down at the page.

"There was another woman. Twenty years ago," Olivia said. "Same thing."

Broyles leaned back in his chair. "I can give you a week. Nine days, tops. But if anything bigger comes up, I'm pulling you back. No questions."

Olivia nodded, hiding her joy. "Agreed. Thank you sir."

"Be careful," he said as she left his office. "I hear you're likely to drown from all the rain up there this time of year."

Olivia grinned and pressed her phone to her ear. Peter picked up after the first ring.

"What's the deal?"

"Pack your bags," she said. "We're heading to Twin Peaks."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mostly the same as what was posted over on ff.net, with a few minor changes...

The man in the loud Hawaiian shirt who greeted them at the Spokane airport sported a wild mop of salt and pepper hair and a large grin, which he reserved for Walter as the two friends spotted each other across the surprisingly busy concourse. He stood beneath a large, illuminated 'Welcome to Spokane' sign; on his feet, he wore two different coloured socks within his leather loafers.

"Walt Bishop! Aloha!" Jacoby declared as he pitched his arms around Walter's shoulders. "What's it been—thirty years?"

"Aloha," Walter writhed, uncomfortable with the sudden proximity but trying hard to be polite. "Lawrence, this is my son, Peter."

Jacoby stretched out his hand and shook Peter's. "Pleasure!"

"Nice to meet you," Peter offered.

"And this," Walter motioned to Olivia, "Is this team's  _raison d'être_ : Special Agent Olivia Dunham."

Jacoby pulled his glasses off his nose and took Olivia's hand in his. "My my. The last FBI Agent I saw…well, he didn't look like this."

Peter stifled a chuckle. "She's a hell of a lot more than a pretty face."

Olivia shook the doctor's hand. "It's a pleasure," she said. "I read a paper you wrote once, about Transcendental Meditation and pain management in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. Fascinating research."

He leaned into her. "I like to think so. But the medical establishment is less inclined to jump on  _that_ bandwagon!" he laughed "Come on, let's get moving!"

Bags in hand, they ambled through the terminal, always a handful of steps behind Jacoby, who raced ahead, waving his hands as he talked to no one but himself. What they lacked in speed getting out of the terminal was made up on the drive: up the winding, narrow mountain highways between the city and the town, a two hour drive north of Spokane in some of the most up-and-down terrain Olivia had ever experienced.

"So what more can you tell us about what happened, Doctor Jacoby?" Olivia asked, once conversation about the native flora and fauna of the area had ceased.

"I hardly know where to start," Jacoby replied. "The young woman—she's not really young, I suppose, but everyone younger than me is young, right?—she was doing her grocery shopping a few days ago when  _BLAMMO!"_  he slapped the steering wheel with the open palm of his right hand. "Shrieked like she'd been shot and dropped stone cold dead right there in the canned vegetable aisle." He used his knee to control the steering wheel, gesticulating with both hands as he spoke. "She pulled half a shelf of creamed corn down with her when she fell. Poor thing," he clucked his tongue. "She hadn't had an easy life, you know."

"What do you mean?" Olivia said, scribbling in her notepad.

"She was the much younger sister of a town beauty—the first Miss Twin Peaks winner back in the Sixties—raised by a rather cold mother. A real piece of work. No father figure to speak of. First chance she got to split, she did: went off to join a nunnery."

"You can do that still?" Peter asked, incredulous.

"As long as the world needs nuns, I suppose," Jacoby shrugged. "Annie—that's her name, Annie Blackburne—she came back to Twin Peaks about twenty years ago. Moved in with her sister, got a job at the diner. Then she won the Miss Twin Peaks pageant herself. But things went downhill pretty quickly after that."

"How so?"

"Well," Jacoby took a deep breath, "She was kidnapped by the former partner of the FBI agent who was sent here to investigate the first round of murders—the prom queen and her cousin. Annie was then taken to a strange place she could neither comprehend nor properly identify, and released back into the world only to suffer from delusions, nightmares, severe exhaustion, fertility issues—" he paused. "She moved into her sister's attic apartment and more or less withdrew from public life. Poor girl only went out on Sundays to church and Wednesdays to do her grocery shopping."

Peter let out a low whistle.

"How do you know all of this?" Olivia asked.

"Annie was a patient of mine," he said, winking at her in the rearview mirror. "I respect doctor-patient confidentiality, but I've been down this road enough times with you law enforcement types to know that when it comes to criminal investigations—" he whistled and made a sliding motion with his hand, sluicing through the air beside him. "Well, all bets are off, aren't they?"

Olivia managed the barest of smiles. "These murders," she continued. "How do you know so much about them?"

"You've never lived in a small town, have you darlin'?" he asked with a wry smirk.

"Can't say that I have."

He shrugged. "Well, word gets around. Especially things of this nature." He swallowed. "Harry Truman still runs things down at the Sheriff's station; I'd ring him up and pick his brain if you need more info. And you can always track down Agent Cooper—"

"Agent Cooper?" Olivia asked. "The FBI Agent?"

"Right-o! He was the  _second_  Fed to make his way up here, after Laura Palmer was killed, rest her soul," Jacoby squirmed in his seat. "He was there when Annie went missing, watching the pageant. In fact, he went up there after her. To the woods." He lowered his voice to sharing-a-secret levels. "Strange things happen in the woods, you know."

"How do I reach him?" Olivia asked. "I thought he retired."

"Oh he did retire, but he stuck around. Bought a place up the mountain from town," Jacoby sighed. "Not a very social guy, which is a shame. I liked him a lot. But I suppose after everything he's gone through he's earned the right to some privacy."

Olivia nodded. "We'll need to see the body," she said.

Peter piped up. "Is it true she only weighed about eighty pounds upon her death?"

Jacoby raised his right hand. "God's honest truth," he said. "Eighty three-point-five pounds. Same thing happened to Josie Packard twenty-odd years ago. If I could explain it, I would, but—"

"Well how much does the soul weigh?" Walter interjected.

Jacoby turned to look at his friend, and Peter and Olivia, after sharing a glance across the car, sat a bit straighter against the seat backs.

Walter glanced around him and smiled awkwardly, directing their attention to the window and away from him. "What kind of trees are these again, Lawrence? Lodgepole pine?"

Jacoby took the bait. "Douglas fir," he said. "The granddaddy of the Pacific Northwest timber family…"

 


	3. Chapter 3

Calhoun Memorial Hospital in Twin Peaks, Washington was a small, underfunded, and woefully understaffed place that had clearly seen better days. The morgue in the basement of the building was dimly lit and set on faulty motion sensors in order to save on electricity costs; whole wings were frequently pitched into complete darkness at the most random intervals completely unrelated to the movement in any of the rooms, which lent the area an unease that Olivia couldn't quite stomach.

Olivia normally enjoyed the grittier aspects of her job, such as the examinations that Walter frequently performed, but this time she only stayed around long enough to do a once-over of the body of Miss Blackburne.

The woman, in her mid-forties, was average height and, pre-death, of average build. Her hair was blonde, curly, with hints of grey starting to peek out at the temples. She had fair skin, a childish appearance owing to her round cheeks and the lack of wrinkles around her eyes or mouth. Indeed, if she didn't know better, Olivia might have thought the young woman to be in her mid-to-late twenties, not nearing middle age. She was wearing a simple dress at the time of her death; her purse contained the bare essentials for a woman on a shopping trip—her wallet, house keys, a tube of Lipsyl, a notebook in which her shopping list was scribbled down in an impeccable and studied hand, and two individually wrapped peppermint candies.

Nothing especially remarkable stood out about her, which made her extraordinary death that much more remarkable by comparison.

Annie's personal effects had been placed in a brown sack and left in a box opposite the cooler where her body had been placed prior to the official autopsy. Olivia requested that the items be sent to her once she had a place to work; then, with one final glance at the body, she excused herself.

Peter followed her out of the room. "What's up?" he asked.

"Yeah," she nodded. "It's just there's a lot of work to do and—"

The lights flickered again and Olivia tensed. Peter reached for her. "Liv, is everything okay?"

She closed her eyes and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just…I have a not-so-nice feeling down here. That's all."

Peter glanced around. "I can't say I blame you," he offered. "But look, I'm starved. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and some lunch. We can discuss strategy."

"What about Walter?"

Peter shrugged. "You know how he gets when he's like this. He's not going anywhere." As if on cue, the sound of uproarious laughter coming from the autopsy room and the two doctors within it filtered into the hallway. "Besides, there's only so much of the good Doctor Jacoby that I can take right now..."

Olivia smiled. "Well all right then."

As they began to walk down the corridor towards the service elevator, they were met by the imposing figure of a man in what appeared to be park ranger regalia, sporting a cowboy hat, and carrying a badge. "You must be the FBI," he drawled, his voice booming as it echoed down the dark parts of the hallway.

Olivia braced herself for a fight. "Yes, and you are—?"

The man stepped into the lighted part of the hallway; Olivia saw he wore a smile, his hand stretched out towards her. "Harry S Truman, Sheriff of Twin Peaks," he shook their hands with vigour. "And I couldn't be happier to have you here."

Olivia and Peter exchanged glances. "That's not exactly the kind of reception we're used to getting when we show up, Sheriff Truman," Peter offered.

"Yeah, that's what Cooper said when he got here too," Truman said, pulling off his hat and running his hand back through his greying hair.

"You were Sheriff back in 1989?" Olivia asked.

"Then, and now, and for all the years in between," he said with half a laugh. "I just keep getting elected…even when I don't run."

Olivia ignored the grumbling protestations of her half-empty stomach and smiled at the Sheriff. "I'd love to talk to you, get your perspective on what happened."

The Sheriff shrugged. "Don't know what more I can tell you that isn't already in the file," he said.

Olivia countered. "It's routine, mostly."

"Well, I was just on my way in to meet with Doctor Jacoby," he said with a casual nod towards Olivia's still rumbling stomach. "But what say we meet up right afterwards. The Double R Diner? Half an hour?"

"Sure," Peter said. "That sounds fine. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Sheriff Truman replied through a smile as he adjusted his hat again on his head and ambled into the examination room.

* * *

The Double R Diner was filled nearly to capacity as Olivia and Peter sat down in the only available booth large enough for three people; it was positively packed by the time Sheriff Truman joined them ten minutes later. They talked about general goings on—the lunch special captivated Peter and Truman for a solid five minutes, Olivia noted wryly—and enjoyed their lunch before the conversation began to turn to more serious matters.

Peter almost ordered a second slice of pie when Olivia produced the case files she had pulled in preparation for the case, which she was preparing to share with Peter. He wiped his hands on the napkin and pushed his plate away with a barely audible groan.

"Go ahead," Olivia said without looking up from the files. "Order another."

Peter considered but eventually shook his head. "You're an enabler, you know that?"

Olivia teased out a grin as she handed him the first file. "Teresa Banks," she said, "Murdered February 9, 1988. Just over a year later, Laura Palmer—murdered." She handed him Laura's file, followed by a third. "Little less than a month after that, Madeleine Ferguson, Laura's cousin—murdered, found beneath Whitetail Falls."

Peter glanced at the files. "Three murders in just over a year. For a small town like this it must have really hurt," he said, taking in the last of his coffee.

Sheriff Truman nodded. "There's no nice way of putting it, but at one point there I was so sick of writing up incident reports about murder and assaults, I seriously considered hanging up my gun and handing over my badge," he sighed. "You just don't see stuff like that in these small towns. Property disputes and traffic violations, sure. But murder?"

"Is that why the Feds were brought in?" Peter asked.

"I'm not gonna lie, the thought crossed my mind the moment we pulled Laura's body from the water. If not the Feds, than maybe some reinforcements from the city." Truman tapped his hand on the Palmer file. "But when Laura went missing, so did another school mate of hers. Ronette Pulaski. She wandered over into Idaho, crossing state lines…"

"And right into the FBI's jurisdiction," Peter nodded. "So there were two agents sent here?"

Olivia shook her head. "Not at the same time, no. Teresa Banks's murder was investigated by Agent Desmond. Chester Desmond. He went missing a few days after arriving in this part of the state. Nobody has seen or heard from him since."

"And the second guy?" Peter asked. "Did he just spirit away too?"

"FBI Special Agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper," Olivia said, taking a fourth file out from her briefcase and thumbing through it. "Exemplary agent. Rose through the ranks faster than anyone had before him. An impressive track record." She handed him the file.

"Finest law man I've ever had the pleasure to work alongside," Truman said, a deadly serious tone in his voice. "And I don't dilly dally with hyperbole like that. I mean it. He was one of the best."

Peter traced Agent Cooper's name on the file tab. "D.B. Cooper?" he scoffed. "Come on, Liv. That's gotta be a joke, right?"

She stared at him blankly, and he sighed.

"I guess you missed Conspiracy Theory Day at Quantico."

Olivia's eyes dropped to Cooper's truncated personnel file as she continued to thumb through it. "The case is so fascinating. I mean, there's so little to go on, but it's clear that  _something_ happened to Agent Cooper the night of March 26, 1989, and it affected him deeply. Enough to make him quit his job less than a month later."

Truman nodded his assent. "I'd seen enough in that month to believe that we had been staring down something truly evil that night at the Grove. It changed all of us." He paused, staring a hole through the Formica tabletop. "Not a day goes by when I don't think about what happened."

"Before that," Peter interrupted. "This Agent Cooper…did he make any headway in the case?"

"Yeah," Truman said. "He had his own brand of…sleuthing, let's call it. And it worked, since we got our man." Truman lowered his voice. "Laura's own father, Leland Palmer. Cooper got him to confess to the whole thing."

Peter made a face, as if he'd just eaten rotten garbage. "Jesus…"

"It gets worse," Truman said. "He was possessed by an evil spirit. It had been inhabiting Mr. Palmer's body for years, decades maybe, forcing him to rape and terrorize his daughter in secret, while he systematically drugged his wife to keep her from finding out."

Peter closed the file in front of him. "Wow," he said, raising a hand in jest. "Check please?"

Olivia scoffed and continued. "Agent Cooper was summarily framed for drug smuggling and a host of international infractions involving an unauthorized police raid into Canada that he spear-headed."

"That's when Cooper's crazy ex-partner showed up," Truman added.

"Okay, I'll bite," Peter said, clearly overwhelmed by the turn the story had taken. "What's the story there?"

"There was…bad blood between them," Truman interjected. "Coop's partner—Windom Earle was his name—he'd been institutionalized for a few years following the murder of his wife. He blamed Cooper for her death. I guess that's how he justified taking his aggression out on the town."

"Agent Earle kidnapped Annie Blackburne the night she won the Miss Twin Peaks pageant," Olivia said softly.

"That would have been an easy enough end to the story, but then we went up to the woods." Truman swallowed against the lump in his throat. "I watched Coop walk into that clearing and disappear behind a curtain that just materialized out of thin air. Like a mirage. He followed Agent Earle and Annie, and he reemerged hours later with her. No Agent Earle. In fact, nobody ever saw Earle again."

Olivia sat up straight. "Agent Cooper never recovered, and apparently neither did Annie." She locked her hands together on the tabletop. "There's one thing all the people involved in this case keep saying, and it's that there's something in the woods…"

Truman pushed the brim of his hat up a half inch and leaned back in his seat. "People here have known that for generations," he told them. "It's something you grow up with, without question. If nothing else, there's a healthy respect for the natural world here that you don't find in many other places. It's just the law of the land."

"So let me get this straight," Peter said. "We're not just here looking for a reason why Annie Blackburne died, but also what the hell is going on in the woods?"

The question was levelled at Olivia, but Truman answered it. "If you can," he said.

Olivia looked down at the manila folders under her hands. "I guess if we're going to get started we should cross-reference a list of witnesses, friends and relatives, people who were involved with Annie or Agent Cooper or had experiences in the woods."

"That's damn near the whole town, Agent Dunham," Truman remarked, casting himself deep in thought. "But I guess if I had to start anywhere, it'd be with Norma—Annie's sister—and Norma's husband, Ed Hurley," he paused, thinking. "Annie didn't have a lot of friends in town, but Shelly Briggs is the closest you'll get. She and her husband Bobby live on the other side of town."

Olivia wrote the names and addresses down in her notebook as Truman recited them. "Any one else who might have insight into the case? Friends of Laura's? People who knew Madeleine? Agent Cooper's? Any sheriff's deputies or state troopers?"

Truman continued to wrack his brain. "Donna Hurley was Laura's best friend when they were in high school. She married Big Ed's nephew a few years after everything calmed down. You should talk to Garland Briggs. He's a retired Air Force man. May be able to help as well. He was involved in some highly classified investigations into the secrets of the woods. Are you familiar with Project Blue Book?"

Peter stared incredulously between Olivia and Sheriff Truman. Truman, undeterred, forged ahead.

"Apart from that, you'll have full access to my staff, our offices, whatever you need." He paused. "And then I suppose you'll be needing to speak with Coop."

Olivia nodded. "It would be standard operating procedure, yes."

Truman was silent for a while. "He's a bit reclusive these days. Small wonder, I suppose," he cleared his throat. "We were friends once upon a time but we…lost touch, is one way of putting it." He drummed his fingers on the table top for a moment before continuing. "Could I join you when you went up to talk to him?"

"Of course," Olivia replied with a curt nod and a smile.

"Thank you."

"No, thank you. You've been so accommodating," Olivia said as she finished writing up the names and information in the notebook. "It's much appreciated."

"We're grateful to have you on board," he said as he pushed himself out of the booth and put down some money on the table top. When Olivia proceeded to object, he shook his head. "It's the least I can do. And Mr. Bishop, order that second slice of pie, before they run out. They  _always_  run out."

Peter nodded and smiled. "Will do, Sheriff."

"Have a nice day," he told them, before turning and walking out of the diner.

Peter stared after him for a long while before turning back to Olivia. "Is this for real? Does this place really exist?"

Olivia closed her notebook and stacked the file folders neatly on the table in front of her. "It's quaint."

"He knew everyone's address from memory," Peter pointed out.

"It's a small town, Peter," Olivia reminded him. "They make it a habit to know everything about everyone."

Peter shivered. "It's a little too  _Stepford Wives_ -y for me," he said. "Small towns and their dark underbellies…"

Olivia glanced back at her list of names. "You busy this afternoon?" she asked.

"Not especially," he replied. "I should get Walter settled before I do anything though."

She nodded. "I think I'd like to get started on these interviews as soon as possible…"


	4. Chapter 4

OLIVIA DUNHAM (O.D.): Norma, can you tell me a bit about your sister, Annie?

NORMA HURLEY: She was just this sweet girl. Innocent. Funny. Disarming.

O.D.: She lived here with you and your husband Ed, is that right?

N.H.: Yes, that's right.

O.D.: Did Annie had many friends? A social life?

N.H.: Not really, no. I mean, before she was taken, she was growing friendly with Shelly Briggs—of course, back then, she was Shelly Johnson. They worked the same shift at the diner sometimes. After the abduction, though—she kept her job at the diner, but she really didn't like to be around people all that much. I let her work nights when we weren't so busy, cleaning tables or washing dishes. She was happy doing that.

O.D.: Your sister changed after she was abducted?

N.H.: I didn't know her too well before she arrived again in Twin Peaks. We were twenty years apart in age, you see. She was just a baby and I had already left home and married Hank, my first husband. But she wasn't especially outgoing, just pleasant. Shy but intelligent. She was sharp too, always reading. After she came back from that…place…she would sit alone in her room most of the time. She'd start crying for no reason at the drop of a hat. She was afraid to leave the house.

O.D.: Did she ever tell you what happened to her?

N.H.: Only that she went somewhere, and she saw things she couldn't explain, and that it all frightened her terribly. She'd been seeing Doctor Jacoby for years and it never really seemed to help her much. In the last few years, he was the only person outside of Ed and me that she would talk to.

O.D.: Did Annie have a relationship with Special Agent Dale Cooper?

N.H.: The FBI man? Oh, I don't know. He was sweet on her, that's for sure. And I think she returned that. But whatever was there before disappeared once she came back. He went in there after her, you know. To save her. But she wanted nothing to do with him after he rescued her.

O.D.: Did she ever tell you why?

N.H.: She said he was different. She said "I'm different, Norma, and he's different, and it's like oil and water now, two kinds of different that don't mix very well." I don't know what that means.

O.D.: Did Annie keep a diary or a journal by any chance?

N.H.: She did, yes.

O.D.: If I could see it, that would be helpful.

N.H.: I suppose so…she's gone now, isn't she? What harm can it do?

* * *

O.D.: Shelly Briggs, Bob Briggs—what can you tell me about Annie Blackburne?

S.B.: I didn't know her too well before all that stuff happened at the Miss Twin Peaks Pageant but I guess you could say we were friends. I was probably the closest friend she had, aside from the FBI Agent.

B.B.: Agent Cooper.

S.B.: Right. Cooper.

O.D.: Do you know if she took drugs or other substances?

S.B.: Annie? No way. She was clean as a whistle. There's no way.

B.B.: She was a nun before she arrived here. I don't think there was anyone in town more innocent than her.

O.D.: Bob—

B.B.: Bobby.

O.D.: Bobby, what was your relationship with Annie?

B.B.: I didn't have one.

O.D.: What do you do for a living?

B.B.: I'm CFO of Horne Industries.

O.D.: Horne Industries? You mean the company that's owned by Benjamin Horne?

B.B.: One and the same. Ever since his accident twenty years ago—

O.D.: Accident?

B.B.: An altercation with the good Doc Hayward. Ben hit his head, and the concussion caused some brain damage. Hasn't got a mind for numbers any more. He's the face of the company, the hand they shake. I mind the store.

O.D.: You and Mr. Horne were both implicated in the murder of Laura Palmer at one point, were you not?

B.B.: What's your point?

O.D.: I'm just trying to ascertain the relationships in town. It will help us understand things better.

S.B.: Oh no, Bobby—it's happening all over again isn't it?

B.B.: No, Shelly. No, it's not.

O.D.: Shelly, your first husband, Leo Johnson, went missing at the same time as Annie, is that correct?

S.B.: Before that, yes.

B.B.: He was a profoundly disturbed individual.

O.D.: And he was implicated in the disappearance of Laura Palmer, was he not?

S.B.: But—but I heard Annie just died in the grocery store. Nobody killed her, did they?

O.D.: That's what we're trying to figure out.

S.B.: You don't think Leo…?

B.B.: No, Shelly. Leo's long gone. And that's all we're gonna say about that.

* * *

O.D.: Donna Hurley, it says here you're the manager of the Meals on Wheels program here in Twin Peaks?

D.H.: That's right. James—that's my husband—he says I should pass it on but I'm not ready to retire just yet. After the twins were born, I considered it, but Maddy and Laura were so well-behaved that I could take them on my route with me, and it became something we enjoyed doing together. They're grown now. Taking Art History at Washington State.

O.D.: Did you know Annie Blackburne well?

D.H.: She was on my route for a few years. I brought her lunch every day and dinner three days a week—Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. She liked Saturdays because we always served meatloaf. It was her favourite. But I didn't know her personally.

O.D.: She was sick? Or just reclusive?

D.H.: Reclusive, mostly. Not a bad case—I have people on my route who haven't set foot outside their home in decades. Annie could leave. She was just nervous around people.

O.D.: Did you ever ask her why?

D.H.: We talked about it a couple of times. Mostly, she said she was afraid of people, of what they could see. She said she could see things, so she assumed everyone else could, too. And she was afraid of him, of running into him somewhere in town.

O.D.: Who?

D.H.: Agent Cooper. I don't know why. He's such a charming man. Always has been. Wouldn't hurt a fly. He was incapable of meanness.

O.D.: You named your daughters after Laura Palmer and Madeleine Ferguson.

D.H.: We did, yes. They were special girls. I wish my daughters could have known them, even for a moment.

* * *

O.D.: Deputy Andy Brennan…and Lucy Brennan. It's nice to meet you.

A.B.: Thank you.

L.B.: It's nice to meet you too.

O.D.: Deputy Brennan, you work for the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, is that correct?

A.B.: Yes, ma'am. Part time. Sort of like when they need an extra hand or two, or someone to answer the phones when the receptionist is on holidays.

O.D.: I see. Twenty years ago, were you involved at all in the investigation into Annie Blackburne's disappearance, or the deaths of Laura Palmer and Madeleine Ferguson?

A.B.: Yes, ma'am. Those were [voice cracks]...those were terrible.

L.B.: Andy has a soft heart and a gentle soul. [to Andy] Are you okay, Andy?

A.B.: I'm okay, Lucy. It's just hard...[sniffles]

O.D.: It's okay, Mr. Brennan. Can you tell me what you remember about the cases?

A.B.: Well, there was—[breaks down crying]

* * *

O.D.: Major Briggs—I'm sorry, you're a retired Colonel now, is that correct?

G.B.: That's correct. But please call me Garland.

O.D.: Sir…your son, Bobby, was Laura Palmer's high school boyfriend. Is that true?

G.B.: Yes, that's right. Laura was a sweet girl. We knew her for a long time. She was like a daughter to us. Bobby seemed to adore her. To hear him tell it, she hung the moon.

O.D.: How did you find out about the circumstances surrounding her death?

G.B.: We knew about her disappearance from her mother, Sarah Palmer. In the weeks that followed, however, I was compelled to add my expertise to the situation, and eventually we were able to track down and eliminate the source of the problem—an evil spirit dwelling within the woods who we called BOB.

O.D.: You believed he was eliminated?

G.B.: We did, yes. But events led us to believe otherwise as the weeks unfolded into the spring of that year…

O.D.: Colonel Briggs, what is your area of expertise.

G.B.: I'm afraid much of that is classified. Even with your security clearance, Agent Dunham.

O.D.: Is there anything you can tell me?

G.B.: Well…I can say with near certainty that whatever spirit we thought we had vanquished did not, in fact, die along with Leland Palmer. I can also say that whatever it is still resides in those woods. I have seen him. I have visited the places where they dwell. And I know without a doubt that if the death of Annie Blackburne is as suspicious as the incessant rumours spreading like wildfire through town might suggest, you will find your answers in Ghostwood Forest…


	5. Chapter 5

Late that evening, after the interviews around town concluded, Peter and Olivia churned up the winding roads that led to their hotel, a stately expanse of rough hewn timber in the style of a Coast Salish lodge called the Great Northern Hotel.

After he'd checked in on his father, Peter found Olivia in the lobby. A roaring fire warmed the corner of the room she'd chosen to sit in; her face glowed in the ruddy light thrown out by the flames leaping and tumbling in the hearth. He ordered two whiskeys at the bar and joined her for a nighttime debrief.

"How was your day, dear?" Peter joked.

"About the same as yours," she sighed, grasping the tumbler of whiskey and swirling it in her hand. We interviewed the owner of the diner, her longtime employee, and the manager of the local chapter of Meals on Wheels, and all we found out for certain is that the pickings must be slim in this part of the state since these women have married more criminals and convicts between them than most people meet in a lifetime."

Peter grinned and took a sip from his glass.

Olivia sat back in her chair. "Then there was the sheriff's deputy , a retired Air Force colonel unable to tell me anything because his knowledge is, as he puts it, highly classified. There's another deputy on holidays and a former FBI Agent holed up in a shanty seven miles up a mountain…"

Peter laughed. "Walter didn't really make much headway either, from the sounds of things. If that makes you feel any better. He wants to go back to the hospital tomorrow. He's also contacted Astrid and is having his own lab set up, I guess at the Sheriff's station." He swirled his hiball glass in his hand and took a sip. "Which reminds me: Sheriff Truman left a message with the front desk. He'd like to meet us tomorrow morning to go up and talk to Agent Cooper."

"Well that's something."

"I suppose," he said.

Olivia patted a book on the table beside her chair. "And we do have Annie Blackburne's diary."

"I guess we made out not too badly after all."

Olivia chuckled. "I think I'm going to stay up and read this for a bit."

"No problem," he finished his glass and stood up. "Next round's on you."

"Count on it," she smiled.

Before he could turn around to leave, however, he paused. "Olivia…what's the real reason this case is so important to you?"

She looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"Well—I've seen you get immersed in a case before. But you've got as many details memorized as the Sheriff," he shrugged. "I guess I'm just curious."

Olivia sighed and shifted in her seat, tucking her legs up underneath her on the chair. "When I was at Quantico, my first year, we had this series of guest lectures. People who cracked high profile cases, early adopters of new technologies that shaped the field—basically the FBI's way to showing off, trotting out the talent to impress the new recruits."

Peter perched on the arm of the chair next to her.

"There was this agent," Olivia said, tucking her hair behind her ears. "For the life of me, I can't remember her name. But she was this psychologist. Young, talented. My grandpa would have said she was full of piss and vinegar," Olivia grinned. "She talked about the importance of staying mentally fit, on the job and in our personal lives, because of the toll that being an FBI Agent has on a person."

Olivia picked at her thumbnail as she continued.

"Why was this so important, someone asked her. And she wasted no time in telling them that this job can kill you, slowly and from the inside out. Like root rot in a potted plant, she said. She'd seen it firsthand, when she was a kid, growing up in this town out west, she told us, where a bunch of high school kids got murdered and half the town was afraid to step into the woods because of what might be lurking there."

"She grew up in Twin Peaks," Peter said, matter-of-factly.

Olivia simply nodded. "She told us about the first missing FBI Agent, and then about another who went stark raving mad after failing in his duty to protect the people he'd sworn to protect," she said. "I pieced together the details and eventually found the case files, all of them, relating to this place. And I studied them day in and day out. Technically the case was never closed, you know. But no one was willing to take it on, to solve it, to bring that closure that it was clear not only the town needed but this agent, she needed it too."

"So you just knew you had to be the one to do it."

Again, Olivia nodded. "When Walter got that email, it clicked into place. I had to beg Broyles to let me have it. But I was determined."

"Stubborn is more like it," Peter said. "That's a great story, Liv, but when are you gonna get to the part where you tell me the beautiful, feisty former resident who ran off to join the FBI is coming aboard and joining our team and is going to fall madly in love with me and…?"

Olivia laughed. "Go to bed, Peter. I'll see you in the morning."

"Yeah," he smiled at her. "G'night Olivia."

"Night."

Olivia found herself alone in front of the fire, thinking about the FBI agent she met and how and if she could get in touch with her. The memories of that first meeting were thick, and she shook her head to dislodge them, downing the rest of her glass and flipping open the book in her lap as a way of distracting herself from the contents of her mind.

She scanned the pages of Annie's for significant dates, words, and events. The diary went back fifteen years, with sporadic entries scattered throughout, referencing day-to-day banalities like the weather and what she bought at the store, to significant world events, like her reaction to September 11th and various political elections at both the state and federal level.

Most interesting were the entires where she talked about her dreams. She had them, she reported, very infrequently; when she did, she was struck by the vivid qualities they possessed. She could taste and hear and smell things as if she were experiencing them first hand, in real life. It was, in her words, unlike anything she'd ever known.

But they weren't all pleasant dreams. Once in a while, a darkness would shadow the pages. Annie would write about strange people and voices in the dark; she reported feeling as though she were being watched. She suffered physical symptoms—dizziness, blurred vision, nausea—and after a particularly bad nightmare, she found herself unable to sleep for days. The advanced sleep deprivation caused her writing to ramble, but Olivia found these entries most enlightening: they showcased the unadulterated, unfiltered mind of a woman beside herself with fear and exhaustion, but struggling to make sense of what was happening to her.

Olivia was struck several times by the powerful desire to save Annie from what she was going through, despite understanding the impossibility of such a task. But as she felt herself lulled to the edge of sleep by the crackling fire and the warmth from the whiskey, she found herself making a promise to Annie to do exactly that.

* * *

_Olivia was in the red room again. One foot rested on a white zig-zagged stripe on the floor, the other on the black. She studied the room: it was different than before. A cluster of armchairs on her right; a lamp; a Venus de Milo statue. She also noticed shadows behind the curtains, silhouettes against fabric, and was overwhelmed by the sense of dread that accompanied each figure's movement. She took a step into the middle of the room and noticed with sudden clarity that there were people sitting in the chairs—a beautiful woman in a black dress, a little man in a red suit, and the man she remembered from previous dreams: an older gentleman in a black suit, carefully styled hair, and a faraway sadness in his eyes. The trip appeared to be immersed in conversation._

_"_ _Hello?" she said, trying to draw their attention._

_"_ _Skaeps ehs," the little man said. "Enoemos of uoy dnimer ehs t'nsoed?"_

_The voice was strange, garbled. Olivia trained her ears on it, trying to place its origin. Slavic? Nordic? The little man turned to look at her and then back at the gentleman._

_"_ _I don't know her," the man said, his voice clear despite the anxiety rippling through him. Olivia trained her eyes on his face. She recognized him from somewhere…from somewhere other than just in her dream._

_At that moment, the woman in the black dress turned her head to look at Olivia, her vacant, white eyes suddenly flashing a fiery amber. Like the night before, she opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out, until all of a sudden a loud, long, otherworldly shriek slipped from her lips. Olivia struggled to cover her ears against the horrific sound._

_"_ _Why are you doing this?!" Olivia screamed, shrinking back against the curtain._

_The gentleman in the chair turned towards her, and as the little man put a finger to his lips and effectively silenced the banshee, the taller man walked over to Olivia._

_"_ _Are you from the military?" he asked. "Or the Bureau?"_

_Olivia swallowed past a lump in her throat. "Bureau."_

_"_ _You have to find her," he pleaded. His face was drawn and haggard, like he'd lived through years of sleepless nights, each one etched into his face. "Please?"_

_"_ _Who?" Olivia asked. "Who can I find?"_

_But before he could answer, the little man stood up and began to dance to music only he could hear. His movements were jerky, spasmodic, as if he were struggling to hold his body upright. He danced his way over to the corner where Olivia was still standing, leaning against the heavy drapery panel. When he reached her, he stopped, staring up at her with his overly large eyes._

_"_ _Aizobnomrag" he whispered._

_"_ _Garmonbozia," the gentleman repeated._

_The shrieking lady let loose another scream, and as a roaring fire enveloped her, Olivia fell to the floor, shutting her eyes tightly against the fearful world…_


	6. Chapter 6

"Olivia. Olivia, wake up."

She felt a hand on her shoulder and bolted upright in the armchair. She was in the lobby of the Great Northern; the fire in front of her blazed hot and bright, but it was light outside. A thin, wet blanket of snow had covered the ground overnight, and it stuck in heavy clumps to the branches of the trees she could see outside the windows. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up straighter. The book in her lap fell to the floor.

Peter bent to pick it up. "You slept here last night?"

Olivia nodded. "I guess so," she said. "Was I dreaming?"

"Looked like it."

She rubbed her eyes again. "It was so strange…" she muttered.

"How about we talk about it over breakfast?" he asked. "I hear they make a mean omelette in the restaurant."

"No, you go on ahead. I'll catch up," Olivia smiled.

Peter quirked an eyebrow. "You sure?"

"Positive," she nodded. "I think I want to clean up a bit first."

Peter nodded, and for the first time, Olivia noticed Walter standing behind him, watching the scene with a curious detachment. When he noticed her noticing him, he managed a small wave. Olivia smiled and turned back to the book Peter had dropped to the table. It was the diary, Olivia reasoned. I shouldn't have read it so late…

"We're going to try and visit that FBI Agent today, right?" she asked. "Cooper?"

"Not me," Walter said. "I want to perform a few more tests at the hospital."

"Not today, Walter," Peter shook his head. "Doctor Jacoby has patients all day. There's no one available to let you in down there. And Miss Blackburne's body had already been released to the funeral home."

Walter grumped. "Fine. Then I shall wait for my requested equipment to arrive. I have tests to run and time is wasting."

Peter leaned in to Olivia conspiratorially. "Astrid's been doing some research for him back home," he said. "Spirit guidebooks and occult research, that kind of thing."

"Derision, son, is a suit best left in the dark corners of your wardrobe," Walter huffed. "How can you call yourself a man of science if you lock the door of an open mind?"

Peter acceded. "I'm sorry, Walter. Won't happen again."

Olivia interjected in the father/son conversation. "Why don't you come with us, Walter. I'm sure it will take a while for Astrid to send your equipment to you. You'll be bored sitting in the Sheriff's station all day."

Walter considered her offer, his face softening as he realized it wasn't such a terrible idea after all. "Yes, my dear. That's what I'll do."

Olivia grinned. "Good. I'll be down in ten. Order me a coffee?"

"Will do," Peter nodded.

She pushed herself up and headed to her room, where she showered, got dressed, and joined Peter and Walter with two minutes left to spare in the time limit she'd given herself. Her coffee hadn't yet arrived at the table.

Two tables over, a group of German businessmen was engaged in an early morning philosophy session—from Olivia's limited knowledge of German, the discussion centred on facets of beauty and aesthetics according to Immanuel Kant—and within minutes of arriving, Olivia was watching as an animated Walter joined in the discussion. Peter, amused, ignored his father's accented German and turned his eyes back to his notes.

"I didn't know your father spoke German."

"Truthfully, neither did I," Peter offered. "But nothing's a surprise to me anymore."

Olivia nodded, yawned, and took a sip from her coffee. "So what's the actual plan for today?"

"Sheriff Truman'll be coming by to pick us up in a little over an hour to head up to meet with Cooper."

"Sounds good."

"He also cleared out a conference room at the station," Peter said. "We'll need a base camp that isn't ten miles up a mountain away from the townsite."

"That's helpful," Olivia said. "It'll be nice to spread out somewhere else, rather than just on top of a duvet in a hotel room."

Peter eyed her with a grin, and Olivia realized the double entendre lurking between her words.

"You know what I meant." she hissed, her cheeks flushing.

Peter held up his hands in defense. "I'm not touching that one!"

With a strangled laugh, Olivia downed the last of her coffee. "Anyway," she continued. "I want to also put in a call to Agent Broyles. See if we can't track down the FBI psychologist…"

"That's a good idea," Peter replied. She looked up at him and recognized sincerity brimming behind his irises. She smiled.

"Yeah," she nodded, looking down at the wood inlay pattern of the tabletop and tracing the outline with her index finer. "I just hope it works."

* * *

At the end of a narrow, twisting road, sloping at a nearly 40-degree angle up the side of a mountain, a small cabin sat nestled within a grove of towering evergreens. Sheriff Truman sat in the driver's seat of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department truck, which he cautiously maneuvered into the narrow opening between the trees that was, ostensibly, a driveway. Olivia wasn't even sure that they were at the right house until she detected movement in the trees, and spied a man chopping wood just off the side of the circular driveway that stood in front of the squat log cabin. The smell of smoke and the billowing clouds rising from the cabin's chimney, coupled with the inches of snow covering the ground, gave the whole scene a Currier and Ives feel; it looked like a postcard picture.

Sheriff Truman eased up on the gas as the terrain levelled out and they broke through the trees within sight of the cabin's occupant. He stopped chopping wood and pushed the brim of his wool hat up and out of his eyes before resting the axe against the wood pile behind him and making his way over to the car, which Truman parked in front of the cabin door. She stepped out into the soft snow bank and braced herself for the cold.

The sound of four doors closing thudded softly against the snowbanks, and as Sheriff Truman led the way into the clearing, Olivia saw recognition dawn on the other's man's face.

"Harry Truman," the man said. "As I live and breathe…"

"How're you doin', Coop?"

Smiling broadly, the two men exchanged a timid handshake that blossomed into an embrace borne out of years of history almost tangible enough to touch as it wafted over the group. The second man wore a black and grey plaid jacket, bundled up high to cut through the chill in the air. He had heavy black gloves on his hand, and his carefully styled hair had caught flecks of early morning ice crystals in it, presumably as he'd been chopping wood and sending the frost flying in the crisp mountain air. His cheeks were flushed; his eyes, open and liquid brown, smiled kindly at the Sheriff as they shared a moment in silence.

Truman clasped the other man on the shoulders and made a half-turn back towards the car. "I'd like you to meet some people."

Olivia fumbled with chilled fingers for her badge as she stepped forward and offered him her hand. "I'm Special Agent Olivia Dunham. This is Peter Bishop and his father, Doctor Walter Bishop, civilian consultants with the FBI."

Awed, the man closed the gap between them. "You don't say! I haven't seen an FBI agent in years, since I left the Bureau."

He shook Olivia's hand, then Peter's and finally Walter's, before coming back to stand in front of them. Olivia couldn't take her eyes off his face. He didn't look like a man in his fifties.  _Where have I seen you before?_

"Agent Cooper—" she started.

"Formerly," he corrected. "Just Mr. Cooper now. Dale, if you'd prefer."

Olivia smiled, ill-at-ease with her recollection and inability to pinpoint it exactly, and lost her train of thought. She smiled and shook her head, ending the exchange.

"How are you?" Truman asked. "You know…with Annie."

Cooper nodded sadly. "Grief is something you grow into, day-by-day," he opined, adding: "I'll manage."

"I'm real sorry, Coop."

He shrugged. "How's Norma?"

"Doin' about as well as you'd expect, considering."

"It's such a shame," Cooper said, shaking his head. "I can't help but feel responsible."

"Why do you say that?" Olivia asked.

Cooper shrugged again and exhaled, his warm breath creating a speech bubble of condensation in the frigid mid-March air. "I guess I could go back to 1989 to answer that. If only I had been more cautious then, or, barring that, if I'd been quicker to act the night at the Roadhouse, at the pageant."

"Coop," Truman offered helpfully. "There was nothing any of us could do."

"Harry, all the sugar in the world hasn't helped me swallow that bitter pill," he said with a sigh. "Honestly, if only I'd gotten to her sooner."

"You did the best you could," Truman clapped a hand on Cooper's shoulder. "As it was, you were the only person in that supermarket who knew enough to perform CPR."

"You were there when Annie died?" Peter interjected.

Cooper nodded. "We passed each other in the aisle moments before—"

He trailed off suddenly, letting out another concealed breath and motioning back towards the wood pile. "I've been chopping wood all morning. This cold snap keeps you busy when you don't have central heating," he smiled. "How about we move this indoors and out of the cold. I'll put on some coffee."

"Drip or percolator?" Walter asked.

Amused, Cooper walked over to join Walter as they headed into the cabin. "Do you have a preference, Doctor Bishop?"

Delight danced in Walter's eyes as he pressed the former FBI agent. "Well, have you ever tried it boiled in a medical grade beaker?"

Peter shook his head as the former FBI Agent and his father bonded over the correct brewing techniques for various coffee grinds. Truman stifled a laugh himself. But Olivia, hanging back from the rest of the group, still rolled Cooper's face over and over again in her mind. She'd seen him before; she knew she had, and not just as an unfeeling photo staring back at her from the pages of a personnel file. But where?


	7. Chapter 7

Cooper poured out five cups of steaming coffee from the insulated metal coffee pot and began passing them out to his guests. "I arrived in Twin Peaks on February 24, 1989, to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer. The moment Ronette Pulaski crossed over into Idaho, the FBI caught the case. There was no question about it falling into our jurisdiction. So I familiarized myself with the case on the flight from Philadelphia to Seattle. Two murders, a year apart, with striking similarities. If it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck…"

Olivia repositioned the tape recorder on the table in front of her. "When did you become aware that this case was unique?"

"As soon as Gordon Cole handed it to me, personally. He wasn't interested in cases unless they were unique, strange…" he turned to Olivia. "I'm sure you've heard about Agent Cole? His eccentricities?"

Bits of old, half-remembered facts floated back to her. "The Blue Rose cases," she said, adding, for Peter and Walter's benefit: "I guess, in a sense, Agent Cole is the progenitor of Fringe Division. The cases he took on didn't fit the traditional mold but no one else knew what to do with them. Things like the occult, the supernatural, aliens. But many of the things he was investigating then became things we are investigating now," she said, glancing back to Cooper. "He handpicked the agents he wanted working on his cases. It was both an honour and a bit of a burden, to hear it told."

Cooper nodded. "I knew it wouldn't be your average case, your average serial killing. And it wasn't."

Olivia changed tack. "You were here in Twin Peaks for the murder of Maddy Ferguson, is that correct?"

Cooper nodded. "Yes. That was the turning point for the case, wouldn't you say, Harry?"

Sheriff Truman concurred. "We had Benjamin Horne in custody and figured he was good for Laura's murder, thanks to his suspicious behaviour and the evidence we got from his own daughter about his… _involvement_  with Laura."

Olivia busied herself taking notes. "So it came as a surprise to find another murder with the best suspect in custody?"

"Naturally," Cooper said. "So we came at it from a different angle. I'd always attempted things that were…unconventional, shall we say, and with varying levels of success. In this case, the hunch paid off. We cornered Leland Palmer and he—or, rather, BOB—confessed to it all."

"Bob?" Walter asked. "Who's Bob?"

"The best we could tell, he was the evil spirit residing within Leland. The poor man had been sharing his body with a demon for the better part of his life, and he'd been coerced to rape and murder his own daughter," Cooper shook his head sadly. "It was beyond tragic."

"A man murders three people and his demonic possession is tragic?" Peter scoffed.

Cooper didn't back down. "When you watch a man's tormented soul leave his body after realizing the full extent of the horrors he's inflicted upon his own flesh and blood…yes, Mr. Bishop, it is a tragedy. It's all a tragedy."

Olivia redirected. "You remained in Twin Peaks for the rest of March, even though your official assignment had already ended. Why?"

"Initially, it was my plan to take a vacation, but I was required to stay here for the duration of the DEA and FBI Internal Affairs investigation into my unauthorized raid on a Canadian gambling house and brothel, intended to recover Benjamin Horne's daughter from her captors during a failed blackmail and takeover attempt."

Olivia looked at Sheriff Truman, who nodded. "It's a long story."

She turned back to Cooper. "And once that investigation was over—"

"Windom Earle returned," Cooper sighed. "He was my former partner, and he went mad a few years earlier, following the murder of his wife while he and I were on her protective detail." Cooper paused, a faraway, haunted look crossing his face. "I say he went mad," he continued, "but it was always my belief that he faked his illness to cover up the fact that he was the one responsible for her murder. Why he murdered her is something that eluded me for many years—but I believe now that not only was she a material witness in a federal crime perpetrated by her husband, but that Windom knew Caroline and I were having an affair."

Peter glanced at Olivia, who held his gaze for a moment before continuing to take her notes.

"When Windom returned, he began sending me clues, taunting me. I knew I had to stay and settle the score, not for my own personal gain but to ensure that no one else suffered at his hands," Cooper shook his head. "He was playing by his own rules. We thought we could beat him, but he was a mad man, rigging the game as he went. When we discovered his plot to kidnap the winner of the Miss Twin Peaks pageant, I thought that would be it. But it was only the beginning."

"This is when Annie Blackburne was abducted?" Olivia clarified.

"Yes," Cooper said. "Kidnapped and taken, I believe, to the Black Lodge. That was Windom Earle's endgame all along. He was looking—had been looking, I think, since the middle part of the 1960s—for an entrance to the Black Lodge."

Olivia sat up straight and shook her head. "Black Lodge? What's the Black Lodge?"

This time, it was Walter who piped up. "Spirit worlds. Inhabited by shadow people."

The other four people in the room turned their attentions to Walter.

He continued. "They're mythologized in the oral history of several Native American tribes along the Pacific coast, from northern California through British Columbia and up into Alaska, some even as far away as northern Russia, across the Bering Strait."

"You know your stuff," Cooper sat back, once again in awe.

"My father's been known to read the dictionary," Peter quipped. "For fun."

"Sue me for enjoying the challenge of trying to win at Trivial Pursuit in as few moves as possible…" Walter muttered.

Cooper released a sigh and a smile. "There are worse pastimes, Dr. Bishop," he said, continuing after a beat. "In any case, he's right. They're spirit worlds, or a kind of alternate dimension that contains unimaginable power. It was this power that Windom Earle was seeking. He wanted to harness it, I believe, in order to become a powerful wielder, a Dugpa or a sorcerer," Cooper stared into his coffee cup. "To what end, I can't say. He never returned with us that night. I believe his soul resides in the Black Lodge now."

Olivia was furiously writing down everything she could— _Black Lodge, Dugpa, shadow people_ —and only half listened to what Cooper was saying. But she caught onto his last words. "Returned with you?" Olivia asked. "Are you saying you believe  _you_  went to this Black Lodge as well?"

"Yes," Cooper said, looking at Sheriff Truman and back again. "I believe Windom Earle used Annie's fear to open the door and travel across the threshold into that other world."

"Why fear?" Peter asked.

"It's a powerful emotion, wouldn't you agree?" Cooper asked. "Seems like the perfect vehicle, capable of turning a person into a key, to paralyze them with their own fear and use that to cross over."

Olivia didn't let Peter answer. "Do you believe the evil spirit—Bob, as you call him—is trapped within the Black Lodge?"

"It's possible. Highly likely, in fact. Annie and I were the only two entities to return to the woods that night." He trailed off, lost in thought for a moment. "I saw her taken from the stage right in front of me. I resolved to get her back, to do everything in my power to see her returned safely. I had to do for her what I couldn't do for Caroline." He took a deep breath. "So I followed them to the woods, to Glastonbury Grove. I don't know how to describe what I saw when I got there. It was like another dimensional plane opened up in front of me and I was able to step across the void, into another world. There were people there—people I'd seen, people who had died. I thought maybe it was heaven, but after a while I woke up in my room, very much alive, but unable to recall much of anything about what happened."

Olivia nodded and returned to her notebook, which was now a mess of scribbles and shorthand. Deciphering it would take forever. But she was struck suddenly by the recognition dawning at the edges of Cooper's words; what he was saying hit a nerve.  _My dream_ , she thought…

"Annie was in the hospital for a long time when she came out of the woods," Cooper continued. "She was in a medically induced coma for a while, because whenever she was awake she would fly into an uncontrollable frenzy. No one could contain it. After a while, she calmed down, but would be catatonic for most of the day. I could visit her then, but once she began to reawaken, she refused to see me. She really refused to see anyone," Cooper sighed. "She withdrew from town, from social events. It was sad to see." He paused. "I lost faith in my ability to do much of anything after that. Left the FBI. Bought this place. And that's about all she wrote, really."

"Mr. Cooper, what happened in the supermarket that day?"

Cooper looked down at his hands. "We passed each other in the aisle. She was buying corn—creamed corn, I think. I hadn't seen her in so long, I guess I was nervous. I smiled and told her how much I disliked creamed corn. A simple remark, an icebreaker after years of so little." He sighed. "Annie took one look at me…I-I must have frightened her. She didn't say anything, so I left." When he looked back up at her, his eyes were brimmed with tears. "I never wanted to hurt her. If I had known I'd frighten her so much, I wouldn't have said anything. I would have left the store altogether until she was done."

Sheriff Truman, seated just to Cooper's right, clasped a hand on his friend's knee. "It's all right, Coop. You did exactly what you were supposed to do. No one could ask for any more."

Cooper nodded, his eyes cast down. "I broke my one rule by getting involved with Annie. My carelessness cost Caroline her life; it led directly to Annie's abduction, which she never recovered from, and may have caused her death."

Olivia closed her notebook. "We're tremendously sorry for your loss, Mr. Cooper. If there's anything else you can remember, or that you think is relevant to the investigation, please don't hesitate to call anytime." She handed him her business card, which he accepted with trembling hands.

"Thank you, Agent Dunham."

Peter and Walter made their way to the door while Olivia collected her things. She was about to reach for her tape recorder when Cooper's hand collided with hers; he was reaching for it, too.

Olivia gasped as the memory of her dream flooded back to her in its entirety—the red-draped room and the black and white tiled floors, the little man and the screaming woman and the gentleman in the suit who talked to her.  _It was you_ , she thought as she regarded the handsome former FBI Agent with fresh eyes.  _You're the man from my dream_ …

"This is a nice tape recorder," Cooper said. "I'm sure I still have my old recording device somewhere in here. A trusted friend. Not unlike today's smartphones, with Wi-Fi connectivity. No little tapes to mess about with."

As if on cue, Olivia's phone buzzed, sending a tinny chime out into the cabin.

Cooper grinned and shook his head. "I'd never fit into that world now…"

"Mr. Cooper," Olivia began, suddenly overcome with names and faces and half-recalled remembrances from past conversations. She opened her mouth to speak without rightly knowing where the words were coming from: "Can you tell me what happened to Josie Packard?"

At the mention of her name, both Cooper and Sheriff Truman straightened their backs imperceptibly, casting glances in each other's direction.

"She died in 1989, correct?" Olivia asked.

"I remember," Cooper said. "We were there. We saw it happen. She—"

"She was scared to death," Truman announced. "Right in front of our eyes. You saw BOB there, didn't you Coop? You saw BOB the moment after Josie died."

Cooper nodded slowly, his face hardening. "The same thing happened to Annie, didn't it?"

Olivia held his gaze for a moment longer before shaking her head. "We don't know yet. I'm sorry I can't give you more information about it." She reached out to shake his hand. "Thank you for your time. We'll be in touch."

Cooper shook her hand—and Olivia brushed off the odd sensation that traveled up her arm from the juncture of their palms—and a few seconds later they were piling back into the truck and heading down the mountain.

"What was that about?" Peter asked Olivia as they passed out of the long driveway and back onto the highway. "Who is Josie Packard?"

"Doctor Jacoby mentioned her when we were coming up here from Spokane. We knew there was another case from years before…"

"I haven't thought about Josie in years," Truman interrupted.

"You knew her pretty well then?" Peter asked.

"I should say so," the Sheriff said. "I was gonna marry her…"

The silence in the car grew heavy and oppressive, broken only by the faint vibration and delicate chime of Olivia's phone once again, a reminder that she had yet to check her phone for whatever message had been left. She shook herself out of the daydream long enough to reach into her pocket and pull out the device. There was a new email message waiting for her:

_Agent Dunham:_

_Your FBI psychologist has agreed to meet you. She'll be arriving at the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department sometime this afternoon from the Portland field office, along with the lab equipment Walter asked for._

_I hope the investigation is bearing fruit. When you get back, I hope you'll tell me what all this was about._

_Best,_

_Philip_

Olivia sent a one-line reply: "Thanks—see you in a week" and hit 'Send,' a wistful smile on her face.

"Sheriff Truman, I believe someone will be waiting for us at the station. Would you mind taking us there when we get back into town?" Olivia asked.

"Let me guess," he joked. "A midget in a dream told you this?"

Olivia shot him a look in the rearview mirror; Peter, at her side, narrowed his eyes at her too.

"Not  _exactly_ …" Olivia replied.

"Wouldn't be the first time I took direction from an FBI Agent based on dream interpretation," Truman sighed. "Or rock throwing, or ancient Tibetan meditative techniques, for that matter."

"These are fascinating deduction techniques," Walter piped up.

Peter threw up his hands. "I'm not even going to ask…"


	8. Chapter 8

As they drew closer to the sheriff's station, Olivia grew nervous. She recalled little about the woman she was about to meet. Part of her wondered suddenly if she'd dreamed it all up, if the woman waiting for them might not be the person she remembered after all.

But as they entered the station and wandered between the cartons of equipment Walter had requisitioned, Sheriff Truman's eyes lit up and a smile crossed his face. He took two long strides across the room before enveloping the woman in the black trench coat—the one with the oversized glasses and impossibly red lips to match the shoes on her feet and the perfectly shiny cascade of brunette hair waved around her face—in a hug of the most epic proportions.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"FBI business," she said.

Truman jabbed a thumb at the woman and looked at Olivia. "Is this who you were meeting?"

Olivia nodded, though she couldn't be sure; it looked like the woman she remembered. There was no way to tell, at least not until she took off her glasses…

"I'm sorry," Peter stepped in. "Did I miss something here?  _Who_  are you?"

The woman smiled and removed her glasses. "All this equipment isn't going to set itself up, right? Come on! Let's get started."

Sheriff Truman held back a laugh. "I'd like to introduce you all to the inimitable FBI Special Agent Audrey Horne."

With Audrey's help, Walter, Peter, and Olivia set up his makeshift lab in the empty conference room within the hour. Walter was beside himself with excitement as he finally called the hospital to have the tissue samples from Annie Blackburne's autopsy sent over so he could begin his analyses.

With Walter occupied and the lab samples on the way, Audrey and Olivia made their way to another, smaller room for the conversation Olivia had been waiting so long to have.

"It's been years since I've been back but I see not much has changed," Audrey said as she walked the halls, her hand dreaming lines along the wallpaper. "But  _everything_ has changed. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think so," Olivia replied. "Agent Horne—"

"Please, call me Audrey."

Olivia wavered. "I don't know if you remember this but you gave a lecture to my cohort in our first year at the FBI Academy at Quantico," Olivia said. "About forensic psychology and the importance of mental health and counselling for agents in the field."

Audrey smiled. "I'll definitely take it as a compliment that  _you_  remember so clearly."

Olivia smiled and opened the door to the second conference room, holding it open for Audrey. "You talked about this case, the one Agent Cooper worked on, and how it inspired you to become an Agent yourself."

"You think all that is connected to this?"

Olivia nodded. "I believe so. I mean, that's why I'm here."

Audrey nodded and combed a loose section of her raven hair behind her ear. "I haven't thought about it in a long time. I had stopped trying to get the Bureau to take the investigation seriously. So when I got the call from Agent Broyles, I was more than intrigued about how the case got reopened in the first place…"

"Walter—Doctor Bishop—he received an email a few days ago from Doctor Jacoby—"

"Is he still practicing?" Audrey asked with a wide smile.

Olivia nodded. "It seems Jacoby thought it would interest Walter, as an expert on fringe science, and when he told us about what happened to Miss Blackburne. I knew the Bureau could help. So here we are."

Audrey nodded. "You're with Fringe Division?"

Olivia nodded.

Audrey let out a soft chuckle. "It would have to be Fringe that opened this up again. I'm glad for it though," she winked. "There's too much here for the straights to unravel."

Olivia allowed herself to smile as she flipped open her notebook. "We've been talking to people all over town—Norma and Ed Hurley, Ed's nephew James and his wife Donna, Bobby and Shelly Briggs, people involved in the original case and people who knew Annie—"

"What have you found?"

"Not much," Olivia confessed. "The pieces fit into a narrative, but none of it seems to  _feel_   _right_. It's too tidy."

"I felt the same thing," she confessed. "Twenty years ago, when it all happened. Everything tied up so neatly. And there were lingering issues that never sat well with me. With a lot of people."

Olivia felt her words choking her, sticking to the back of her throat like honey. "Agent—Audrey? What happened?"

She shrugged. "I'm sure you know what happened."

Olivia didn't say anything, and Audrey sighed, deeply, before standing up and walking towards the window. She pressed her hands to the windowsill and leaned on it, her nose pressed against the window pane. "I was friends with Agent Cooper. I don't think it was much of a secret that I had a bit of a crush on him but…well I was 18, and he was this strong, handsome man here to protect us, you know? Nothing happened, but it wasn't for lack of trying on my part at least. He saved my life, after I was kidnapped, and I guess I just fell for him, head over heels. But he was adamant that his personal life and his professional life had to stay separate. After what happened to Caroline—"

Audrey paused and shook her head, collecting herself. "I didn't blame him, and I let it go. Then he met Annie. I suppose I never really got over that, the way he kind of fell for her, got mixed up with her, but he wouldn't with me. Maybe I was just jealous…I was naive, and idealistic, and I was out to prove to him that I was mature enough to handle whatever the world threw at me." She let out a rueful laugh. "All it got me was a two week stay at Calhoun Memorial after I chained myself to a bank vault at the Saving and Loan right before a bomb blast sent the whole building crumbling around me."

Audrey shifted her weight from one foot to the other, continuing to stare out the window. "I heard about what had happened to him one day when the nurses were changing shifts. He was on the same floor as me. So I went to visit him…but it wasn't him."

Olivia was perched on the edge of her chair; the front lip of the seat dug painfully into the back of her thighs, but she didn't care. "What do you mean?"

Audrey shrugged off a shudder. "He was—strange. Different. But just slightly so. Not enough to set off alarm bells, you know? Just enough for it to strike me as odd. We had a few conversations and…an encounter…"

"Encounter?"

Audrey sighed. "Once he was released, and I was released…knowing what I knew about Caroline, and after what happened to Annie, I reached out to him. It started one way…very romantic—"Audrey grinned. "He looks like an altar boy but my god is he a good kisser!"

Olivia smirked and jotted a few notes in her book, distracted by the thought.

Audrey didn't immediately continue. Olivia looked up into her face. She was trembling.

"Agent Dunham, I just don't think I can talk about it. Not yet."

Olivia grew sympathetic. "That's all right."

Audrey's tense body relaxed. "I didn't stay long in Twin Peaks after that. As soon as I was accepted to college, I left, and eventually I made it into the Academy. I didn't know much about the case at the time, you know, but years later, when I got the chance to study it and talk to the people involved on the FBI end of things…Leland Palmer's name kept coming up, and I kept hearing how strange he became in the end. It struck me that Sarah Palmer saw things in her husband that I had seen. In Dale." She shivered, imperceptibly. "It was just an observation. But it made me wonder if perhaps Agent Cooper hadn't met something far darker and more evil in Glastonbury Grove than any of us could have dreamed of…"

"Audrey—"

She held up her hands in defense. "I'm not suggesting anything. These are hunches and nothing more. But…if you're going to look for answers, I'd suggest you start with Agent Cooper."

Olivia cleared her throat. "We did. He spoke with us this morning."

At that, Audrey perked up. "You did?"

"Yes. He lives up the mountain, in a little log cabin."

She smiled, but there was no mirth to be found there. "He would do that, wouldn't he?" Audrey asked no one in particular, her voice registering barely above a whisper. "I'll bet he makes furniture out of driftwood in his spare time…"

"It seemed like a long time since he'd seen Sheriff Truman," Olivia offered. "I'm sure a visit from an old friend—"

Audrey shook her head suddenly, and with such force that her hair tumbled from behind her ear where she'd tucked it before. "No. No, I can't," she said, grabbing her bag and clutching it to her chest. "I'm very glad you're here, and I'll be available if you need anything. You can reach me through my father's business. I have to go."

She bustled around the room, reaching the door just as Peter opened it to enter. She said a hasty goodbye and walked off down the hall.

"What was that about?" Peter asked.

Olivia rubbed her temple. "Nothing," she said. "How are things with Walter?"

Peter motioned to the door. "You should come and look at this."


	9. Chapter 9

Walter was peering down the microscope when Olivia and Peter re-entered his makeshift laboratory.

“Walter?” Olivia asked.

Dr. Bishop looked up from the eyepiece. “Oh, Agent Dunham,” he said. “I’m glad you could join us. Is the lovely Agent Horne—?”

“What did you find, Walter?” Olivia asked.

He nodded. “Well, I can confirm with you that Miss Blackburne’s body weighed eighty three-point-five pounds, exactly what Doctor Jacoby told us. Her most recent physical exam took place last Wednesday. Her weight was recorded at one hundred thirty six pounds, even,” Walter said, drifting for a moment in his thoughts.

Olivia crossed her arms over her chest. “What could cause the loss of fifty pounds in the span of a week?”

“Nothing. Not even the most extreme dieting could cause this. It’s not possible, and even if it were, it would leave some kind of sign on the body, in the tissues and organs.”

“And you can’t find anything?”

“Not a trace.” Walter wore a cryptic smile on his face.

“I know that look, Walter,” Olivia intoned.

He nodded. “It’s lucky for us that Miss Blackburne was not an organ donor. I was able to take samples from her heart, lungs, brain, liver, kidneys, stomach, reproductive organs—”

“—And?” Olivia urged him on.

“And…her heart was strong, she had no plaques on her brain, no evidence of systemic diseases or organ failure. Annie Blackburne was a very healthy forty-year old woman,” Walter said. “But she was not only perfectly healthy, there is no readily apparent cause of death.”

Olivia looked at Peter, who stood against the moveable blackboard with his arms crossed. “Well she is dead, right?” she asked. “I mean, there must be a cause of death.”

“And there is, Agent Dunham,” Walter said. “But to explain that, I must first go back to the 1960s…to the experiments done in New Mexico and California—New Age meets the Space Age, if you will—where scientists were actively trying to measure things like the human capacity for love and a way to measure the soul.” 

Olivia looked skeptical but Walter was undeterred.

“The human soul, it was theorized, remains with the body for some time after death. Numerous experiments bore this out—the total mass of a corpse remained relatively constant until around seven to ten days after death. At that point, without any outside interference, the mass changes. By this point, in most cultures, funerals have already taken place, so the change isn’t detected, but—”

“Changes?” Olivia asked. “How?”

Peter interjected. “There was less stuff there.”

Olivia shook her head. “Doesn’t decomposition do that to a body?”

“Yes,” Walter said, “But not always to the tune of nineteen-point-five kilograms, or about forty three pounds.”

Olivia took a deep breath. “So this is the mass of the soul?”

“Exactly.”

Olivia scrunched her face. “But Annie has been dead for less than a week, and her change in mass or weight or whatever was noted right away.”

“I believe,” Walter said, “That the removal of her soul was done at the exact moment of her death. Someone or something took her soul with them after they killed her.”

Olivia took a few deep breaths, steadying herself, while she did the math in her head. “It still doesn’t add up,” she said. “There’s…nine and a half pounds unaccounted for, missing from Annie’s body.”

Walter let loose a chuckle and drummed his fingers excitedly on the tabletop. “She’s quick, Peter,” he hummed. “You’re exactly right. Nine-point-five pounds. Or about the exact weight of all the blood she would have been carrying around in her body.”

Olivia nodded, releasing a sigh of relief. “Well, mystery solved, right?”

Walter shook his head. “Not in the slightest.” 

He raced over to the other side of the long table running the centre of the room and rummaged through a stack of post-mortem photos.

“I considered this, too, but then I remembered that there were no incisions, no attempt at draining the blood from her body. It’s odd to conduct an autopsy before draining the blood, but it appeared that this is what happened. I wanted to find out why. So I investigated the tissues again. And I found that there was not a single trace of blood in any of them. It was as if they had been…cleaned somehow.”

Olivia sat down. “Walter, is it not possible that the blood was drained from the autopsy incision instead of through some other incision? And that the medical examiner just did a very good job at cleaning the body afterwards?”

“I asked the same question,” Peter said. “But pallor mortis was indicated from the instance Annie collapsed in the supermarket aisle. There was no sign of livor mortis at any point, in any of the photos, taken at any point during the autopsy.”

Olivia reached for the photos, which Walter handed over eagerly.

“There was no blood in the body for any of those processes to take place, Olivia,” Peter said.

“How is that possible?” Olivia asked.

Walter leaned on the table. “Annie Blackburne collapsed in the canned vegetables aisle of the local A&P. From fright? Possibly. We may never know for certain. But I can tell you, with the weight of my training and expertise behind me, that I am absolutely positive she had no blood in her body the moment she hit the floor.”

* * *

 

Olivia pushed open the door to her hotel room, with Peter on her heels. “I know we deal with the absolute fringe of the fringe here, but my god, Peter. What’s been suggested today…”

Peter put a hand on her shoulder. “I know, Olivia.”

“Demonic possession and gateways to spirit worlds, dead girls with missing blood,” she ran her hands through her hair.

“Do you think it could be related to what we know about parallel universes?”

Olivia considered. “Nina said there were soft spots all over the world, places where the fundamental laws of physics are breaking down and allowing the passage of matter from one dimension into the next,” she yawned. “It’s entirely possible Twin Peaks is the epicentre of another rip in the continuum…”

Olivia’s yawn triggered one in Peter. He sank into the chair in front of Olivia. “What did Agent Horne have to say about all of this?”

Olivia leaned back in her chair. “That she thinks something awful happened to Agent Cooper in the woods that night and that it changed him, irreparably. I think she was trying to suggest that he was possessed, perhaps by the same evil spirit that inhabited Leland Palmer’s body two decades ago.”

“How does she know that?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes a woman just knows these things about the man she loves.”

Peter grinned. “That dog! He certainly got around!”

Olivia sighed. “It wasn’t what you think,” she said. “But I think it was directly related to the reason Audrey left town.”

“You’re on a first name basis with her already?”

“Peter…”

“Okay, okay. So what if she’s right? What if Agent Cooper was affected by his sojourn to the Black Lodge?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Olivia countered. “Leland Palmer was possessed and killed two people in the span of a few weeks. It’s been twenty years, and no one has died in Twin Peaks until this week. If Agent Cooper is being inhabited by this spirit…”

“From what I’ve read in these files, Leland may have been possessed for as much as thirty or forty years before he started to kill,” Peter said. “Maybe Agent Cooper is only just now getting started, and Annie was his first victim?”

“But he tried to save Annie after she collapsed in the store,” Olivia said. “I mean, if you’re trying to kill someone, you wouldn’t do it in broad daylight and then try to correct things when you succeed, would you?”

Peter wavered. “It’s different than the other murders, I’ll grant you that,” he said, watching as Olivia seemed to collapse in on herself. “But that’s not what the issue is here, is it?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

Peter inched his chair forward. “What’s really going on, Olivia?”

She sighed and brought both hands up to her face before running them through her hair. “I don’t even know. It’s like…it’s like I know what the answer is, it’s right in front of me, but I can’t grasp it.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked up at him, sighed again and laughed as she rolled her eyes. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

“Try me.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she blew out a deep breath. “I have this reoccurring dream,” she admitted. “It’s almost always the same; it has been ever since I first started having it: I’m in a room with heavy red curtains and this striped tiled floor. Zig zagged. Like the stripe on Charlie Brown’s shirt, but in black and white.” She began to indicate in front of her with her hand, as if envisioning the space in the real world. “Sometimes there’s nothing there, and sometimes there’s furniture—a group of chairs, a lamp, a statue. And for the last few nights, there have been people there, too.”

“How many people?”

“Three,” she said. “A little man wearing a red suit. He walks funny, dances a bit, and he seems to talk strangely. Like it’s another language. I don’t understand him,” she took a breath. “There’s a woman, too. She’s wearing all black. Her eyes are white and she never speaks, only screams. And then there’s a man, in a suit and tie. He looks old and sad. He used to come to me in my dreams often, but last night was the first time he spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

Olivia fumbled for the words. “That he knows who I was, that I am an FBI agent. He seems relieved. And then he tells me to find Audrey.”

“Horne? Agent Horne?”

She shrugged. “I guess it makes sense now, but it didn’t before.”

“Do you recognize any of them? These people?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head sharply. “No, not really. I mean, I didn’t. Not until today. But I’m positive that the man in the suit is Agent Cooper.”

“You’ve been dreaming about Agent Cooper?”

She nodded. “For years, it would seem. Since I first started digging into this case.”

Peter considered her. “I guess it’s not the strangest thing we’ve ever encountered…”

“You know what I think?”

Both Peter and Olivia turned to the door, where Walter stood, illuminated by the light from the hallway.

“Jesus, Walter!” Peter cursed.

“I’m sorry but I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said. “Agent Dunham, I think now might be a good time to visit Glastonbury Grove.”

Olivia glanced behind her and to the window. It was dark out, just past supper time. She realized with a pang in her stomach that she hadn’t eaten or drank anything since the coffee they’d had at Cooper’s home earlier that day.

She looked at Walter. “I think you’re right. But I have to eat something first…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack! A year in between postings? How rude of me! Expect better from me from now on :)


	10. Chapter 10

Glastonbury Grove, according to the most precise maps they could find, should not rightly exist at all. Where they eventually found it—right where Sheriff Truman told them it would be—was shown on three different maps as being, alternately, a rocky outcrop from the nearby Sparkwood Mountain, part of a deep man-made valley blasted to bits to make way for the railroad, or the origin of a glacier-fed waterfall that supplied Pearl Lakes to the northeast.

The general consensus was reached that either the state of Washington needed to hire better cartographers and land surveyors, or the maps were intentionally misleading.

Still, as they parked their car off the wooded road and trekked into the grove, they discovered to their surprise that they were not alone; Agent Horne was already investigating.

“We meet again,” she said with a grin.

“And what a pleasure it is,” Walter smiled as he approached, taking Audrey's hand and patting it with his own. “My dear, what brings you to the top of the world?”

She shrugged. “Same thing as you, I suppose,” she replied. “Answers. Truths—”

“Sycamore trees!” Walter broke away from the discussion as he beelined for the ring of young trees forming a circle in the middle of the glen.

“…Not exactly,” Audrey hushed, joining Olivia and Peter as they wandered in after him.

“Sycamore trees are not native to this area,” Walter said as he walked from tree to tree, running his hand along the trunks as he walked. “They can grow here, but not without a lot of care, and certainly not at this elevation. They require rich, moist soil to survive. They wouldn’t grow here naturally.”

Peter shoved his hands into his pockets. “Are you sure they’re sycamores?”

“Look at the bark,” Walter said. “The distinctive, mottled pattern as the bark peels, and the leaves…” he grinned. “These are most definitely American Sycamores.”

“Then what are they doing here?” Audrey asked.

Walter shrugged. “Several cultures around the world have their own mythologies about the trees. The Ancient Egyptians, for example, believed the sycamore was the earthly representation of Ra, the sun god, a figure of rebirth. It was a tree seen as a… kind of guardian” he pontificated. “Coffins made from sycamore wood were thought to be the best vehicle to ferry a soul across the divide between this world and the next. Sycamores are quite commonly seen as protectors of that gateway.”

Olivia stared at the ring of trees. “It’s a perfect circle. Twelve trees,” she said. “They were planted here on purpose.”

Walter straightened up and counted the trees. “Yes, twelve. Twelve, twelve…twelve months in the year, twelve Olympians, twelve Tribes of Israel, twelve Imams. Twelve petals in the heart chakra. Twelve zodiac signs.” He nodded vigorously. “Twelve is a very important number…”

Audrey had reached the outer edge of the ring. “You know, I came up here a couple of days after the incident,” she reached out to touch the tree but stopped just short, her pale hand beginning to tremble in mid-air. She drew it back, clenching it into a tiny fist and rubbing it with her other hand before shaking it out. “That was two decades ago, and yet…these trees haven’t grown.”

“And yet sycamores are voracious growers. They’re some of the fastest growing large trees native to the Americas,” Walter said, lightly fingering the tree trunk. “Peter, will you bring me my bag?”

He began picking samples of the bark off the tree, and using a utility knife he chipped away at the wood, hewing small chunks of the wood from out of the tree trunk. Olivia turned to Audrey.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Your hand…”

Audrey shook her head, projecting an unconvincing air of calm. “It’s fine. It’s just…muscle spasms.”

“Olivia,” Peter called. “What do you make of that?”

She turned back to Peter, shining her flashlight at him and then following the line of his outstretched arm until it was pointing at the centre of the circle. There sat a ring of stones, coated in a powdery white substance, resembling a firepit. Contained within the circle was a pool of black liquid. Olivia trained her flashlight beam on the stones as she entered the grove.

“These trees have never budded,” Walter said. “I’d wager my career on it.”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked.

“There’s no evidence of leaves, no trace of buds. The branches are bare, entirely from root to tip, of any kind of axis that could even feasibly produce a bud."

“What could cause that?”

Walter considered for a long moment. “I suspect that whatever is responsible for their stunted growth is also responsible for the lack of foliage. Something in the soil, perhaps, or merely the location.” He paused. “Or something is leeching energy from the trees.”

Olivia was only casually listening to the conversation being had on the periphery of her field of vision. As she neared the stone circle, she saw the pool of liquid come into focus, and the horrible smell emanating from it finally wafted to her nose.

Walter, too, pointed his flashlight beam on the stones and joined Olivia in the centre of the circle. “That smell…” he remarked, pinching his nose. “What is that smell?”

Olivia had her hand pressed to her face. “It’s awful, whatever it is.”

“Oil,” Peter said, joining them in the circle. “It smells like old, burned engine oil.”

At the outside of the circle, Audrey gasped. “I know that smell!” she exclaimed.

As the words left her mouth, she lurched forward and collapsed to the ground in a fit of seizures that gripped her entire body.

Peter burst from the group and ran to Audrey’s side as Walter reached for his bag. Olivia watched Peter kneel beside Audrey, clearing away loose rocks and debris from around her quaking body; Walter dipped a stainless steel ladle into the tarry black substance and spoon it into a wide-mouthed test tube, which he put in the bag between them.

Olivia stood up and backed away from the stones, suddenly queasy and feeling lightheaded. “I don’t feel well…” she muttered.

Walter scrambled to his feet, and with his bag packed at his side, he gripped Olivia under her arms and hauled her out of the circle to join Peter and Audrey. Slowly, Olivia’s senses returned to her; but at the far end of the circle of trees, she saw a red fog taking shape. As it came into focus, she recognized it as the curtains from her dream, and before her eyes, she saw a hand reach out from within the folds of the curtain. Its finger, outstretched, beckoned her within. Olivia seized with terror, her breath catching in her throat as she gripped the collar of Walter’s coat and struggled to put as much distance between herself and the phantom arm.

Beside her, Audrey’s seizures stopped and before she knew it, the curtains had vanished.

“Olivia…” Walter soothed, stroking her hair.

Audrey wept, her face dampened by sweat. “You saw it, didn’t you? Agent Dunham, did you see it?”

Peter brushed hair out of Audrey’s eyes and helped her to her feet, and Olivia—trying with some difficulty to compose herself—took a shaky stand beside Walter.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “Get her to the car…”

Walter nodded, his bag heavy in his hand as he relieved Peter who, for his part, rushed right back to Olivia’s side.

“What the hell just happened Olivia?”

Heart racing, Olivia stared into the circle of trees. “I don’t know,” she whispered, breathless.

Peter threaded his arm around her back and guided her away from the grove and back towards the road where they’d parked their car. Walter was already helping Audrey into the backseat and buckling himself in beside her; Peter raced to the driver’s side.

As Olivia climbed into the passenger seat, high above her head, she heard the hoot of an owl, and then another, and then another. Looking up, to her astonishment, she counted no fewer than a dozen sitting in the canopy of pine boughs, staring down at them as the car started and filled the wood with light and the rumble of the engine. She shivered violently and wrapped her coat around her middle as she slammed the car door shut and ordered Peter to the hospital, desiring more than anything to put as many miles between herself and the grove as possible.

***

“This is the Waiting Room…” the gentleman told her, shrouded in darkness just beyond the reach of the light that shone down around Olivia, obscuring her view of everything else.

“I don’t know what that means,” Olivia replied, searching for the source of the voice. “Tell me what that means.”

“You’re nearly there,”

Olivia pleaded. “Nearly where?”

“She can help you.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“She was here. She is the key…but she’s afraid.”

“Who?” Olivia cried out. “Who are you talking about?”

“She’s afraid, Olivia.”

Olivia took a step forward, her frustration reaching fever pitch. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

The gentleman also took a step forward, entering the cone of light. His face came into view, only dimly lit by the reflection of the light.

“You know me now. Don’t you?”


	11. Chapter 11

Olivia yawned as she pushed into the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s department. “Good morning,” she said as she handed Peter a paper coffee cup. “I would have brought donuts but I ran out of hands.”

“Thanks,” he said, gesturing to the array of donuts laid out in the break room. “I think they’ve got that much covered.”

She grinned and couldn’t help but yawn again.

“How are you sleeping?”

She levelled her eyes at him.

“It was a joke,” he smirked. “But I take it from your response that—”

“I had another dream. About Agent Cooper.”

Peter nodded as he took a sip from his coffee. “What was it this time?”

Olivia shrugged. “We were talking. He told me we were in the Waiting Room. Does that mean anything to you?”

He shook his head. “Should it?”

“No,” Olivia frowned. “He told me ‘she’ can help us. But I don’t know who she is.”

“Maybe it’s just a dream,” Peter offered. “Maybe you’re driving yourself crazy looking for meaning in something that is just a simple dream.”

But Olivia was unconvinced. She wiped the tip of her cold nose out of habit and nodded toward the conference room. “Any luck with Walter’s samples?”

“He was up all night with it,” Peter said, leaning against the partition between the lobby and the reception desk. “Turns out it is engine oil. But there’s also evidence of tree sap and groundwater, dirt, decomposed organic material, probably from plants and small animals.”

“So nothing,” she said, tugging a hand back over her hair. “This explains exactly nothing. Someone is running up to the woods and dumping engine oil into an old firepit, and we’re picking through it looking for—”

“There’s more,” Peter lowered his voice. “Walter found a rather large amount of hemoglobin suspended throughout the substance, along with traces of a protein found in corn kernels, which I thought was odd…”

“Hemoglobin?” Olivia asked. “So there’s blood in the oil?”

Peter took a deep breath. “It would appear so. Walter is trying to extract a DNA signature to see where it came from, but he thinks—”

“It’s Annie’s.”

Peter nodded slowly. “That’s his hypothesis.”

Olivia ran a hand over her mouth and shook her head, taking another sip. “Any word from Agent Horne?”

“She’s in with Walter, helping him go over some things,” Peter chuckled quietly. “He says if he could he’d fire Astrid and hire Audrey, but I told him that’s not exactly how things work…”

Olivia managed a small laugh. “No, not exactly.”

“She wants to speak to you.”

Olivia nodded, stiffening her back as she walked towards the conference room. Audrey and Walter were heating a solution on a small Bunsen burner in the far corner, heads bowed, deep in conversation. Peter cleared his throat to get their attention, and Walter stood up to his full height, grinning like a fool.

“Did you know that Agent Horne has read the entirety of Tobin’s Spirit Guide?” Walter remarked.

“Is that a real thing?” Peter asked.

Walter frowned. “Of course it is!” he exclaimed. “How else do you suppose she could read it?”

Audrey smiled. “I’ve asked for my copy to be sent here from my office in Portland,” she said. “I figure every little bit helps, right?”

Olivia smiled. “You wanted to speak to me?”

Audrey nodded, struggling to hold her smile. “Yes, if you have time.”

“Please,” Olivia offered, and together they walked out of the room and to the lobby. The green vinyl covered couches they sat on squealed in protest, their age betraying them; they’d seen better days, as had most of the office. Olivia found it endearing, but she could tell Audrey no longer had the patience for it.

“How are you?” Olivia asked.

“Fine,” she replied. “The doctor told me I likely had an allergic reaction to something. Maybe snow mold.” Audrey smiled but didn’t seem appeased. “He gave me some medication, something to help me sleep.”

“That’s good,” Olivia countered. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“I know what compelled me to return here,” Audrey said. “But I’m not sure if it can compel me to stay much longer.”

Olivia nodded with sympathy. “Agent Horne—”

Audrey wrung her hands in front of her. “I’m out of practice, Agent Dunham. I’ve been behind a desk for too many years. I don’t even know if I’d have the wherewithal to fire my gun if I had to.”

“You’ve been a tremendous help.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “I don’t know what happened last night. The tremors…all of it. It’s been years since I saw things like this happen. I didn’t like it when it happened the first time and I like it even less now.”

_She_ _’_ _s scared_ _…_ _she_ _’_ _s the key, but she_ _’_ _s scared._

The words from Olivia’s dream rushed back at full force, nearly knocking the air out of her lungs. “Agent Horne, I think your presence here is paramount to solving this case.”

“Why?” Audrey asked.

“I don’t know,” Olivia replied. “I just…I feel it.”

Audrey’s light scoff wasn’t meant as a rebuke; she smiled gently. “You sound a lot like Agent Cooper when you talk like that.”

“Really?” Olivia asked.

Audrey nodded, and Olivia could see that her eyes were brimming with tears. “He had a gift, I think. Whatever it was…he was special.”

Olivia nodded. “I’m certain he was.”

“I saw him yesterday,” Audrey blurted out. “When I was having the seizure. I saw him, as if he were standing in front of me, real as you are now.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. It was…it was like a waking dream. A vision. There were these red curtains and—”

Olivia gasped, pulling Audrey’s attention away from her constantly wringing hands. “—A black and white tiled floor?” Olivia ventured.

“Yes!” Audrey said. “So you saw it too?”

Olivia nodded. “There was a hand,” she said, reaching out to demonstrate what she’d seen. “It was sticking out of the curtain. Like this.”

Audrey shook her head. “I saw it from inside. I was inside with him, watching him. The man with greasy hair, reaching out of the curtain. He was growling at me…”

“A man with greasy hair?” Olivia shivered and dropped her hand. “Who is he? Did you recognize him?”

Audrey shook her head. “I know I’ve seen him before. There were posters, ‘Wanted’ posters, back when Laura was killed. He was a suspect, I think…”she nodded. “Did you see Agent Cooper too?”

Olivia shook her head.

Audrey trembled as she sighed. “He was standing there, trying to talk to me, but I didn’t want to hear it. He looked so…different.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

She shrugged. “I think something about a diary…”

Olivia leaned back in her chair. “Annie’s diary, maybe? I’ve been over that thing twice now. There’s nothing.”

Audrey chewed on her lower lip. “Laura had a diary.”

“She did?”

“I saw it once. Donna and I. We were helping to put away evidence boxes, and the lid fell off of one as we were putting up on the shelf. I just saw that it had her name on it.”

Olivia combed her hands back over her hair, still slicked back in a tight ponytail. “Okay. That’s where I’ll look.”

Olivia stood and rushed to the reception desk. “Is Sheriff Truman still in his office?”

“Agent Dunham?”

Olivia turned back to Audrey. Her face had blanched, and her mouth hung slack as she stared out the front doors. On the sidewalk outside, Dale Cooper was approaching the station.

She walked over to Audrey’s side. “Are you okay?”

Audrey nodded slightly, but Olivia could see her trembling.

“I can tell him to—”

“No,” Audrey’s voice was calm, assertive. “No. It’s fine.”

As her words left her lips, the doors swung open, and Cooper stopped in his tracks as he took in the sight before him.

“Audrey,” he said, startled.

“H-hello,” she managed.

He fumbled with his hands, not sure what to do, until he timidly approached and reached out to her. She, for her part, hesitated only a moment before reaching into the space between them to grasp his hand in hers.

As their hands met, a smile spread across Audrey’s face. Watching it, Olivia was taken aback by the quickness of the change in her demeanour. Her fear dissipated, dissolved entirely, and Audrey was left with an open, revealing grin that reminded Olivia of the kind of looks she used to see on the faces of high schoolers with big crushes.

Cooper, too, mirrored the same reaction. “My god, Audrey,” he whispered reverently. Her smile broadened, and within seconds, she had stepped into his embrace.

“Agent Cooper,” she purred.

“It’s just Dale now, Audrey,” he said.

“Okay, just Dale.”

“I was coming in to see if anyone needed help. With the investigation,” he said, taking Audrey in as she stepped away from him.

“I think we’re okay,” Olivia interrupted. “But thank you for the offer.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, turning back to Audrey. “In that case…maybe you’d like to get some coffee?”

“Coffee sounds good,” she replied.

And with barely another glance, the two of them walked out of the station and down the sidewalk to where Cooper had parked his vehicle.

“What was that?”

Olivia jumped, her hand clasped to her chest. “Jesus Peter!”

He laughed. “You’ve been watching too many scary movies, Dunham.”

She shivered. “Or I’ve been in this place too long.”

He nodded out the door, where Audrey and Cooper were standing on the sidewalk. “Well there goes my chance to fall in love with, marry, and have lots of babies with a sexy FBI Agent.”

Olivia managed a small, uneasy laugh. “You didn’t stand a chance.”

Peter chuckled and turned back towards the conference room, leaning into Olivia as he passed. “And neither did you,” he smiled.

Olivia waited until Peter was gone before turning back to the door. Audrey and Cooper looked as at ease as could be; it was hard to imagine how much trepidation Audrey had exhibited only minutes earlier. The whole thing puzzled Olivia.

 _But she_ _’_ _s a grown woman and an FBI Agent to boot. She knows what she_ _’_ _s doing,_ she thought to herself as she tore her eyes away from the scene and walked to the reception desk.

“Who would I need to talk to about getting evidence from an old case out of storage?”


	12. Chapter 12

Peter marched into the conference room with his arms full of bags from the Double R, filled with sandwiches and desserts for the entire office. He set everything down in the only clear spot on the long table and began doling out the food to the ravenous crowd that had assembled around him.

“Find anything while I was gone?” Peter asked.

Olivia, hiding her yawn with the back of her hand, shook her head. “Walter’s still looking.”

“Is he talking to you?”

Again, Olivia shook her head. “No. He’s been busy microscoping and mixing and muttering to himself since you left.”

Peter handed her the sandwich and cup of soup she’d ordered. “That’s usually a good thing. When he’s in the zone like this, it usually means—”

“Oh, for the love of god, will you be quiet?” Walter hollered.

The room fell silent and all eyes trained on Walter, who was fiddling with a small device, adjusting the knobs and jarring it with the heel of his hand every few seconds. On top sat a beaker full of a bluish liquid being stirred by the source of his agitation—a rather loud magnetic stirrer that was slightly too big to make an entire revolution without clinking against an irregularity in the glass. Walter was staring at the contraption, willing it to silence itself, when he realized his faux pas.

“Apologies,” he uttered. “I was talking to the equipment.”

Olivia turned back to Peter, who had already resumed handing out the food. “A good sign?”

Peter shrugged. “It’s better than when he goes on about the Grateful Dead for an hour instead of watching that the suspension he’s heating doesn’t boil over and ruin the stovetop.”

As if on cue, Walter chimed in. “I think I know what this is.”

“What what is?” Peter asked.

“The black stuff. The oil.” Walter’s voice was heavy, raspy. He spun to face them. “I am absolutely, one-hundred-percent positive that this somehow related to a gateway that leads directly to the Black Lodge.”

Olivia sat up in her seat and put down her sandwich. “How do you know that, Walter?”

He nodded briskly. “The composition—motor oil, natural elements and organic matter, an abundance of red blood cells, and a sequence of proteins and amino acids found in corn kernels…it changes.”

“The composition changes?” Peter clarified. “How can you possibly know that?”

Walter explained. “Apart from samples that we took yesterday, there are four other samples I was able to recover—one collected in the 1950s or 1960s by the late husband of a local woman, one from the partially mummified carcass of a field mouse recovered from within the circle of stones in 1972 by a Boy Scout on a camping trip, one from the investigation immediately after Annie’s recovery from the Lodge, and one from a park survey conducted five years ago.”

“How—?”

“Peter,” Olivia admonished, pressing a finger to her lips to gently silence him before he could ask his question.

“The samples taken from the mouse and the park survey show the composition to be ninety-five to ninety-seven percent engine oil, with the remainder being plant material and inorganic compounds—rocks, water, that kind of thing.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “It’s odd, but hardly criminal. What’s interesting is that the samples taken closer to the dates of the strange incidents show a composition much more like the sample I took last night.”

“Containing blood and the corn proteins,” Olivia said.

“Precisely,” Walter confirmed. “Also—most fascinating—the blood in the sample I took last night is a one-hundred percent match to Annie Blackburne’s. So I would venture a guess that the blood found in the sample twenty years ago would be a perfect match to the Sheriff’s young lady friend, and before that I’m sure we could cross-reference the old case files and come up with a possible source of the blood from that sample.”

Peter shook his head. “So why is their blood in the oil to begin with?” he asked. “And what’s with the corn?”

Walter shrugged. “Perhaps the hole itself has a kind of…symbiotic relationship with the spirit hosts or the Black Lodge itself. A blood sacrifice into that portal might be enough to power the door,” he pointed to the blackboard, on which he had drawn a from-memory diagram of Glastonbury Grove. “If that’s the case, these trees are, I believe, a form of protection. Planted at some earlier point to ward off the evil that manifests itself at that spot.”

“It might explain why the trees are stunted,” Olivia said, looking at Peter. “The energy they need to grow is being diverted to the much higher cause of protection.”

Peter seemed at a loss. “I never thought I would seriously be sitting here, discussing magical trees and portals but—”

“If only I had that book!” Walter said, turning in a huff to the blackboard again.

“This book?”

Olivia and Peter both spun, startled, towards the door. A man in a deputy’s uniform stood in the jambs. He held a parcel in his hand; a small green book sat atop it. Stone-faced, with hair the colour of volcanic ash and skin etched with wrinkles, a veritable topographical map of his life, and eyes the colour of steel, the man stepped into the room and set the package at the end of the table. His boots sounded hard against the floor.

“It was couriered up from Portland. Just arrived,” he said.

Walter pounced on the brown package. “The book!” he cried. “Agent Horne’s book!” He threw a glance at Olivia as he spoke with absolute conviction. “The FBI should run the postal service. You people are good!”

Walter tossed the green book on top of the box to the table, where the deputy picked it up gently. “Did one of you requisition Laura Palmer’s diary?”

Olivia seized the opportunity and reached out for it. “I did,” she told him.

“And you are—?” the man asked.

While Walter gleefully tore into the box containing Audrey’s copy of Tobin’s Spirit Guide, Olivia introduced the team.

“Tommy Hill, Sheriff’s deputy,” the man said as she finished. “Though people around here call me Deputy Hawk.” He smiled. “Chief Deputy, to be more accurate, but it’s just a title.”

She smiled. “We’re investigating—”

“I know,” Hawk said, cutting Olivia off. “I heard about Annie. She was a lovely girl.”

“Did you know her well?” Olivia asked.

“Not especially. Kept to herself, mostly,” he considered her for a moment before adding: “Of course, you probably already knew that.”

Olivia nodded slightly and Hawk looked around him at the mess Walter had made of the once sterile conference room. His eyes lingered on the test tubes and large, covered beakers of black tar samples, and traveled in their own time to the chalkboard. “I see you’ve been up to Glastonbury Grove,” he remarked.

“You know the place?” Peter asked.

Hawk nodded. “My people have known about the power in that grove, and the power in those woods, for generations.”

Olivia scrambled for her notebook. “Deputy Hawk, is it?” she began. “What else can you tell us about this place?”

Hawk took a breath. “It’s a place of great power. It is believed that the gateway to another dimension can be accessed there.”

“The Black Lodge?” Peter asked.

Somewhat startled, Hawk nodded. Walter let out a cry of excitement as he found the entry in the guidebook.

“The Black Lodge!” he giggled. “It has its own page.”

“I reckon it would,” Hawk continued. “In the mythology of my people, the Black Lodge and the White Lodge are the resting places for the spirits after the body has died. I suppose a modern monotheistic analogy might be Heaven and Hell, but it’s not entirely accurate,” he offered. “The White Lodge is filled with an abundance of goodness. The Black Lodge, on the other hand, is cemented by the very darkest of evils.”

He walked towards the blackboard and tapped his finger against it. “This place is the gateway to the Black Lodge. Every soul must pass through the Black its way to perfection, to the White. It’s there, in the Black Lodge, where you meet you Shadow Self. In our traditions, these entities are called the Dwellers on the Threshold.”

“What happens when you meet your shadow self?” Peter asked.

“With courage in the face of the evil inhabiting there, no harm will come to you,” Hawk intoned. “But, if you approach the Lodge with fear in your heart, the annihilation of your soul is almost certain.” 

Olivia shivered at the thought.

“Fear and love…” Walter repeated, flipping through the book. “Fear…and love…”

Peter moved over to stand beside his father. “What is it, Walter?”

“Garmonbozia…” he said quietly.

Olivia’s ears perked up. “What did you just say?”

Walter fumbled for his words as he flipped through the book. “Garmonbozia. It’s-it’s—ah—a substance, mystical substance. Archaeologists have found evidence of it—everything from words and descriptions to traces of the stuff—around the world, at significant places…the pyramids, with peat bog mummies, on shipwrecks in the Bermuda Triangle, at Roswell and Angkor Wat and—”

“Peter,” Olivia said. “Garmonbozia. In my dream. He told me about garmonbozia in my dream.”

“Who did?” Peter asked. “Agent Cooper?”

“You’re dreaming about Agent Cooper?” Walter asked.

“Agent Cooper had dreams, too,” Hawk added.

Peter came around to her side of the table, lowering his head so he could look her in the eyes. “What did he say?” he urged.

Olivia shook her head. “I-I don’t remember. Just the word, I think.”

“Hah!” Walter exclaimed. He flipped the book around so it was facing Peter and Olivia. His finger rested just above the start of a new section on the page. “Garmonbozia.”

Olivia handed Peter the diary, which she’d still had gripped in her hands, as she grabbed the book and began to read. “‘Garmonbozia is shorthand for ‘pain and suffering’ the likes of which we have yet to find an adequate word for in in any modern language. The word’s source is unknown, but it is widely believed to have originated in a single language or combination of languages spoken by the Sumerians or Akkadians in and around the blah blah blah…” Olivia skipped ahead, scanning the text with her finger. “If taken at its metaphoric meaning, the definition of the word can be understood as a description of the way evil feeds on the pain and suffering of its victims. Thus, as it is associated with otherworldly realms, garmonbozia is commonly believed to be the life source—aka food—of beings or entities from the Other Side. When manifested in our world, garmonbozia most often takes on the appearance and texture of creamed corn…’”

She set the book back on the table. “The corn proteins you found…”

“They’re literally eating their way through the portal,” Peter said softy.

“Are you okay?” Hawk asked. “You look pale, Agent Dunham.”

Olivia pressed a hand to her cheek. “I’m a little tired, that’s all,” she tried to smile. “Deputy Hawk, do you know: is there a way to prevent the passage of these spirits from their world into ours?”

“The trees were supposed to do that,” Hawk told her. “But they’re dying now. I think it means the power of the Lodges is growing. Something is coming…”

“Walter,” Peter chimed in suddenly. “The plug. From Reiden Lake. Could it—?”

Walter nodded. “It’s possible. It’s entirely possible. Yes!” he dashed around the table, heading for the lobby. “I’ll have Agent Farnsworth send it post haste!” As he passed Hawk, he smiled and shook the man’s hand again. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“And you as well,” Hawk replied, speaking to thin air as Walter disappeared around the corner and into the hallway. 

Olivia smiled apologetically. “We’ve been dealing with some unconventional—”

He held up his hand. “No need to explain, Agent Dunham. Like I said, Agent Cooper had his moments of brilliance in his time here, and most of them were strange, to say the least…”

Olivia nodded. “Agent Cooper seems to be the lynchpin to this whole evolving story. His presence here, the incident with Annie, her death—” she shrugged, glancing between Peter and Hawk. “I don’t know how, but the answer to this is going to come from him. I can feel it.”

“Colonel Briggs felt the same thing about Agent Cooper twenty years ago,” Hawk said. “I’ve met very few people in my life who have had the pureness of character to face the Lodge and survive. Colonel Briggs and Agent Cooper were two of the best. But the battle left them scarred. Most who encounter the Lodges are not even that lucky.”

Olivia nodded, her eyelids growing heavy.

“Hey Liv,” Peter reached out to touch her arm. “Look, maybe you should try and catch some sleep here. None of this is going anywhere.”

“There are cots in the back,” Hawk said. “Here, let me show you.”

Olivia looked to Peter, who nodded as he handed her the diary again. “Go on. I’ll be right here. Eating your food.”

She smiled and took the book. “Thank you,” she told him as Hawk gently guided her by the elbow and down the hall, past the holding cells and the evidence locker. Once inside the small room, she thanked Hawk and proceeded to sit on the edge of the cot in the corner, opposite a small desk and upright wardrobe. Hawk left the door open an inch or two as he exited.

Olivia opened the book in her lap as soon as she settled back against the wall. The lock, she noticed, had been forced apart and was now a useless and heavy addition to the rather lightweight book. It seemed to her such a violation until she remembered that this was evidence in a murder investigation; it shouldn’t have surprised her to see that the diary had been opened by someone without the key. _You shouldn_ _’_ _t even be reading it,_ she scolded herself _. And yet here you are_ _…_

Page after page of rounded, girlish script leapt off the page. Each page carried a date header, underneath which was the space to write each entry, divided into sections to allow for multiple years’ entries to be contained on a single page. Laura’s, of course, contained entries only until February 23, 1989.

How sad, Olivia thought as she thumbed through the book. To be holding the secret thoughts and deepest desires of a girl who would never live to see them fulfilled…

She continued to search, looking, it seemed, for the proverbial needle. “I don’t even know what it is I’m going to find,” Olivia whispered to herself as she flipped through February’s entries, blinking against the tired grittiness that turned her eyelids to sandpaper. With a tremendous yawn, Olivia set the book, face up and open, on the small stack of wine crates that had been set up to serve as a makeshift nightstand beside the bed. The light from the table lamp in the opposite corner was just enough for her to make out the details of her surroundings as she took them in once and drifted off to a noiseless slumber.

* * *

 

Olivia stood, surrounded by darkness, completely unable to see anything around her. 

“Audrey… Audrey…”

She searched for the source of the voice but couldn’t even pinpoint with any accuracy the precise direction it came from. It seemed to emanate not from a single place but from everywhere all at once. She felt like she was standing in the centre of a room, the walls of which were comprised entirely of surround sound speakers.

“Audrey…”

“What do you want?” she called out. “Agent Cooper! Is that you?”

“The light.”

“The light? What light?” Olivia was confused. “Where are you?”

“The light…” the voice repeated. “Look to the light, Olivia.”

It was the first time the otherworldly voice had addressed her by name. She froze, not afraid but not at ease. She reached for her sidearm.

“Where’s Audrey…?” the voice returned. "Do you know where Audrey is?"


	13. Chapter 13

Without a timer set, Olivia had no way of knowing how long she’d been sleeping. It felt like minutes, but the sun had begun its descent on the horizon; she could see the last buttery arms of the sunset pouring in over the window across the hall and seeping into the small room through the crack in the door.

She yawned and rolled over. The diary was still there, open to the page she’d left it on. The lamp in the corner burned brightly enough for Olivia to shade her eyes a bit. It wasn’t this bright before…

Suddenly she caught a glimpse of the page in front of her, on the page with the heading marked February 17 beside the year 1989. It was an entry written in pencil, making the words hard to see. She squinted as the page seemed to drift in a breeze, floating up and down as the air currents ebbed and flowed through the partially open doorway. She could see the heavy impression Laura’s pencil had made as she scrawled the words across the page, the shadow of the debossed script growing longer and shorter as the page moved.

Laura had written something in her diary and erased it. Olivia could plainly see the faint impression of words scribbled underneath the last dated entry; it was only visible when backlit by the lamp.

_Look to the light._

“Peter!” she cried out, grabbing the book and hurrying from the room. “Peter!”

He met her half way down the hall. “Olivia, what is it?”

“Does your father have a digital microscope?” she asked. “A USB microscope I can plug into the computer?”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know, why?”

She shook the book in her hand. “I think I found something. But I need a photomicrograph to know for sure.”

Peter nodded and walked with her back into the conference room, where Walter was still hard at work testing his plug hypothesis on the substance from the Grove.

He looked up as they entered. “Oh, Agent Dunham. I think you’ll be happy to hear that I believe we can synthesize—”

“Walter,” Olivia said. “Do you have a USB microscope?”

Walter looked confused, and Peter sighed as he launched into a layman’s definition of the thing Olivia was searching for. “It’s portable, bullet-shaped, plugs into the computer…”

“Oh!” he said. “I thought that was a sexual pleasure device. Yes, over here.”

Peter took a deep breath and blushed ferociously, but Olivia, for her part, was beyond the point of feeling embarrassment. The moment she saw the device in Walter’s hand, she snatched it away and raced to the laptop.

“I’m patching myself through to Astrid,” she said. “She’s in the lab in Boston?”

“Yes,” Walter said. “She should be. I don’t understand, what’s going on?”

“Olivia may have found a clue in the diary,” Peter said.

“Oh,” Walter returned, his eyebrows knitting together quizzically above the bridge of his nose. “What diary?”

Peter brushed off the question as the computer screen flashed to life and Astrid appeared on the other end of the webcam.

“Greetings!” she said through a smile, her image slightly choppy owing to a poor quality Internet connection. “You’re not moldy yet; that’s a good thing.”

“Astrid,” Olivia started. “I’m going to send you a digital photomicrograph of some writing. I need you to clean up the images and send them back to me. Can you do that?”

Astrid switched into professional mode. “I think so. What’s the writing?”

Olivia switched on the microscope and held it in her fist, flipping open the book to the page she needed. “It’s a diary. There’s something there, something that was written and then erased, but the impression is still visible.” She held the microscope over the page, focusing on the computer screen where the image had been magnified. She pointed at the screen. “There! Do you see it?”

Peter and Walter leaned in to the screen; via the webcam, they saw Astrid do the same thing.

“I can’t really read it,” Peter said.

“Grab a flashlight,” Olivia said, and Peter hurried to the other side of the table to retrieve one. “Walter, can you shine it horizontally across the page?”

He took the flashlight from Peter and angled it so it was lined up with the page. Olivia lifted the paper, adjusting the length of the shadows cast on the debossed sections of the page, and ran the microscope over. “Astrid, can you up the contrast?”

“Sure thing,” she replied, and within seconds, she’d sent back a screen-capped still image of the page, with the contrast heightened enough to allow them to make out three words:

          _She told me…_

Olivia’s heart threatened to thud right out of her chest. “There’s more. There has to be more.”

“Keep ‘em coming,” Astrid replied.

Olivia scanned every line of the page, and within minutes, Astrid had assembled them into a larger JPEG that she adjusted for contrast and brightness in order to bring out the writing in full.

“I hope this makes sense to you,” Astrid muttered. “Because it’s not making any sense to me.”

Olivia waited, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. When Astrid finished a moment later, she transmitted the larger file directly to the laptop computer screen Olivia was staring at. The image popped up, and the words Laura had written twenty years earlier and subsequently erased leapt off the page: 

_I dreamed about a woman named Annie tonight._

_She told me to write that she’d been with Dale and Laura, and that the good Dale is in the lodge and he can’t leave._

_I don’t know who Dale is, and I’ve never met Annie before. It was so real._

“Does that help?” Astrid asked.

Olivia glanced at Peter. “He told me how to find it. I had another dream and he told me to look to the light.” She dropped her hand to Laura’s diary. “It was here all along.”

“What was?” Peter asked.

“Liv, are you all right?” Astrid asked.

She nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m better than fine. Thank you,” she beamed at her colleague.

“No sweat,” Astrid replied. “Hey Walter, you should be getting the device I sent you. It was on a mail plane into Coeur d’Alene that landed about an hour ago,” she grinned. “I rush delivered it, just like you asked.”

“Amazing,” Walter replied, giddy. “Then I shall look forward to receiving it.”

“All right,” Astrid beamed. “Stay out of trouble, all of you. See you when you get back.”

In an instant, Astrid disappeared from the screen. The ghostly image of Laura’s erased handwriting was all that remained, illuminating their faces.

“What does it mean?” Peter asked. “Annie and Laura never met, as far as we know.”

“But if Annie was in the Black Lodge with Agent Cooper…” Olivia squeezed her eyes shut. “Maybe she sent Laura a message. Maybe Annie knew something that no one else did. Maybe that’s why—”

A commotion in the hallway drew their attention to the door, which was filled almost instantly by the imposing figure of Sheriff Truman. He was barking orders into the lobby. “Well then meet them at the hospital!” he shouted before turning into the conference room. “A logging truck heading up Blue Pine Mountain came across Audrey Horne about a half hour ago on the highway.”

“What?” Peter and Olivia asked in unison.

“She was delirious. Rambling and crying,” he said as he threw on his coat. “She ran right in front of the truck, nearly drove them off the road. We’re gonna meet them at the hospital. They’re taking her straight there.”

Peter grabbed his coat off of the chair and threw Olivia’s to her across the table. “Does anyone know what happened?”

Truman shook his head. “She was incoherent,” he ran a hand over his face. “God, I don’t even want to think how this could have ended…”

The Sheriff took off towards the lobby, Olivia close behind, as Peter turned to Walter. “You coming?”

Walter wavered. “Astrid said the device…it should be arriving.”

Peter shrugged into his coat. “You can wait for it here if you want.”

His father took only a second before nodding. “Yes. I think I should.”

“Fine,” Peter said. “Call me when you get it.”

He sprinted out of the building, passing Olivia on the front step as she pulled on a glove. Sheriff Truman was relaying a message to the deputy manning the front desk, just returning from his dinner break.

“Send two deputies up the Blue Pine Highway. Audrey was found ten minutes from Dale Cooper’s cabin. They might find something near there—”

Olivia looked up at the sheriff. “What did you say?”

“When?”

“Just now,” she urged. “Where was Audrey found?”

“Ten minutes down the road from Cooper’s cabin,” Truman replied. When Olivia didn’t immediately respond, Truman turned back to the deputy and barked another round of orders before charging ahead to where the truck was parked, urging them to hurry up if they wanted a ride along to the hospital.

Olivia didn’t seem fazed. “The good Dale is in the Lodge…” she whispered. “The good Dale—”

Peter slowed up. “What do you mean?”

Olivia cupped a hand to her mouth. “That’s what he’s been trying to tell me all along, what Annie was telling Laura.”

“What is?” Peter asked. At the truck, Sheriff Truman stared after them, impatient to hit the road.

“The good Dale is in the Lodge,” Olivia repeated. “The Dale Cooper who left the Lodge twenty years ago isn’t the real Dale Cooper.”

The other shoe dropped; Olivia could see the moment it happened for Peter, as the realization dawned across his face. “Holy smokes. His shadow self?”

Olivia shivered; her jacket was folded over her arms in front of her. Peter reached over and took it, shook it out, and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Put your coat on, Liv.”

“I’m right Peter,” she said, absently shoving her arms into the sleeves. “We need to get to Cooper before—”

Peter nodded. “Okay, no, first of all. Let’s go talk to Audrey, find out what happened, and then we can decide what needs to be done. 

Olivia was unsatisfied, but in no position to argue. She walked down to the car and climbed in the front passenger seat, and the caravan made their way to Calhoun Memorial Hospital.


	14. Chapter 14

“I need to get to the Sheriff’s station!” Audrey hollered as Olivia, Peter, Walter, and Sheriff Truman rounded the corner and came within sight of the second floor nursing station. “This isn’t a joke! I’m with the FBI…”

Her voice wavered as she finished speaking and turned to face the four of them coming down the hallway. She was wearing the clothes she’d had on when she left the Sheriff’s Department earlier that afternoon—pinstriped pants, red dress shirt—but the pants were covered in mud and the shoulder seam on her shirt had come apart. Her jacket was missing, as were her gun and badge. She had a large square bandage on her forehead, just above and to the side of her left eye; her left arm seemed to be rather immobile, and Olivia’s keen eye spotted a slight limp in her left leg as she ambled over to Sheriff Truman, her eyes filling with tears.

“Audrey,” he whispered, enveloping her in a warm embrace. “Are you okay?”

Audrey nodded. “It wasn't fun,” she said, eyeing the nurses beside them. “But it wasn't bad enough to have to stay here overnight.”

Olivia saw the nursing staff roll their eyes in objection. She placed a comforting hand on Audrey’s shaking shoulder to lead her to a group of benches around the corner, beside a bank of vending machines.

“Can you tell us what happened?” she asked Audrey.

Audrey pulled away and touched the tip of her nose with the back of two fingers as she sniffled back her tears. “To be honest, Agent Dunham, there’s not a lot to say,” she shrugged. “We went and got coffee, started to walk around town for a bit…the next thing I knew, I was tied up in his cabin—”

“Whose cabin?” Truman asked.

Audrey choked. “Cooper’s.”

The shocked sheriff looked like he’d been hit in the gut. “What?”

Audrey looked to Olivia. “At least it looked like him, but it wasn’t him. I swear—” Her eyes filled with tears again. “He would never have done that to me…the real Dale Cooper—”

“We know,” Olivia said. “The real Dale Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge.”

“Where?” Audrey asked.

Olivia scratched her forehead, trying to figure out how to explain it. “It’s a spirit realm, sort of—like Hell, but not even exactly like that...”

“That’s the short answer,” Peter said. “What we’ve managed to figure out is that—”

“Now hold on just a second!” Truman held up his hands. “I saw Coop come out of the Lodge with my own eyes. I know where the man lives. We were at his house!”

Peter tried to calm Truman, placing a reassuring hand on the front of his shoulder. “We think Agent Cooper met up with his Shadow Self when he was in there and—somehow—this other being replaced Cooper in the real world.”

Audrey was aghast. “So the man I left with today…?”

Olivia nodded, and Audrey raised a hand to her face as she sank into the olive-coloured vinyl chair behind her. “Oh god…”

Truman removed his hat and shook his head. “Are you trying to tell me that the real Special Agent Dale Cooper, Federal Bureau of Investigations, has been trapped inside that place for twenty years?”

“It’s possible,” Peter offered. “We don’t know for sure."

Truman continued. “So who’s been walking around out here?”

“We think it could be his double,” Peter said.

“Inhabited by one of the Black Lodge spirits,” Olivia added.

Truman blanched. “BOB?”

Nobody answered, but it was enough for Truman. He got on his radio and began relaying orders for backup. In front of them, Audrey stared straight at the floor a few inches from her feet.

“Bob…” Audrey repeated. “He kept talking about Bob.”

Olivia kneeled down in front of her. “Cooper was talking about Bob?”

Audrey nodded. "He was making a fire, and he kept saying ‘Do you wanna play with fire? Do you wanna play with Bob?’ over and over again.” Audrey furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t know why or what it means…”

Olivia stood up then, glancing back at Sheriff Truman, who was still on the radio discussing strategies for the backup teams and coordinating efforts with state troopers. She faced Peter. “I think I know.”

“Know what?”

“Why this happened the way it did,” she said, turning back to Audrey. “I think you’re being targeted for a reason.”

Audrey seemed shocked. “But why? Why me?”

“I think you’re special enough to Agent Cooper, and that is reason enough for the evil killer BOB to want access to you,” Olivia said. “But I also think the good Cooper is reaching out to you. He both needs you to help him and is trying to make sure you are as far away from him—or the version of him who’s out here—as possible.”

“How do you know all this?” Audrey asked.

“Because,” Olivia continued. “He’s been trying to tell me so in my dreams.”

Audrey uttered a small gasp. “You’ve dreamt about him?”

“Yes,” Olivia said. “In the room with the red curtains, which I believe is where he is. He called it ‘The Waiting Room.’ I don’t know how, but I think Agent Cooper is responsible for bringing us here.”

“But what can we do about it?” Peter asked.

Olivia pondered for a long moment. Sheriff Truman was still on the radio, walking down the hall away from them. “Audrey, will you help us?”

Audrey seemed to cave in on herself. “Agent Dunham—”

“You loved him once, didn’t you?” she asked. “Your love is what will bring him back. In fact, it may be the only thing that can bring him back.”

“Olivia—” Peter started. “Do you really think we can do this?”

She cast her eyes again at the sheriff down the hallway. “There’s only one way to really find out…”


	15. Chapter 15

There was no easy way to get past the two state trooper vehicles blocking the Blue Pine Highway, even driving in the stolen Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department vehicle. But Olivia managed, flashing her badge and insisting that she was the one in charge. As a light snow began to fall, she had talked her way through the barricade and the Jeep began the climb up the steep driveway to Cooper’s front door.

Audrey shivered in the backseat next to Peter. “You’re gonna be fine,” he said. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”

“Easy for you to say,” she replied, her voice whisper-soft. “Just don’t let him offer you anything to eat or drink…”

They came within sight of the cabin, and Olivia eased up on the accelerator, shutting off the headlights and letting the moon and the light from the cabin guide the way. When they were within walking distance of the door, Olivia parked the truck and keyed the ignition off. She loaded her gun and grabbed a second and and a third from the extras in the car, handing one to Peter and the other to Audrey, whose gun had gone missing.

“Aim to injure,” she said. “We need him to get the real Cooper back.”

“Check,” Peter said.

“Follow my lead,” Olivia told them as she stepped out of the car and into the freshly fallen snow, following the slight indentation of a path as it wound around the circular driveway and to his front door.

They didn’t have to knock at the door for him to answer; he was waiting for them before they’d even reached the step.

“Audrey!” he cried. “I was worried sick—”

Olivia reached for her gun, still clipped into its holster. “Don’t take another step,” she warned. “We know what happened here tonight.”

Cooper’s eyes flashed as he glanced from Olivia to Peter and finally to Audrey. “What did you tell them?” he asked.

“The truth,” Audrey replied, her voice cracking. “I told them exactly what happened tonight.”

He cocked his head to the side, trying to appear chiding but with the effect being far more terrifying that any of them could have anticipated. With psychotic evenness in his voice, he cooed: “You’re mistaken, Audrey. You’ve let your emotions get the better of you.”

Cooper took a half step forward, onto the outdoor step, the toe of his shoe pressing into the snow just beyond the door. Peter cocked his gun, which was already drawn.

“I’m serious, man,” he warned. “Not another step.”

“Audrey,” Cooper smiled. “You’ve always meant so much to me…is this how you’re going to repay that?”

Audrey cleared her throat and steadied her voice. “You’re not who you say you are,” she said. “You’re an imposter. You’re sick. And you’re going to bring the real Dale Cooper back from wherever it is he’s been for the last twenty years.”

At the mention of his name, Cooper’s eyes flashed once again, and he began to laugh. “Fools,” he grinned, his voice dropping, growing rough and jagged around the edges. “You have no idea what you’re walking into.”

In the span of a microsecond, Cooper had produced a gun of his own—Olivia recognized it as a standard issue FBI handgun, and realized that he must have taken it off of Audrey’s unconscious body earlier in the day. It wasn’t long before all four of them had their guns drawn.

“Drop your weapon,” Olivia warned.

Cooper laughed. “There’s no way that’s going to happen, and you know it,” he menaced.

Olivia cocked her gun. “Try me.”

“You can’t shoot me,” he said. “You kill me and Dale Cooper is gone forever.”

Olivia tried to formulate a plan, a backup, an escape route. It was still snowing; the roads were treacherous. She didn’t know when more deputies or troopers would show up.  _Why did you go off half-cocked like this, Liv?_ she asked herself.

“The only way you’re getting out of here alive is to let me have what I want in return,” he said, pointing his gun at Audrey. “And I want her.”

Olivia's mind raced. “Why?” she shot back.

“It’s simple really,” Cooper said. “Aside from being devastatingly beautiful and intelligent, she’s the only person left in this godforsaken hell hole who is capable of saving Dale.”

He turned his attention to Audrey, but as his eyes passed Olivia’s face, he paused.

“Hold the phone…” he intoned. “Aren’t you special too?”

Olivia kept her gun level. “Any closer and I blow your brains out.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen,” he said, sizing her up. “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”

Olivia didn’t respond, but kept her gun aimed directly at him.

“No…no, no, no.” He smiled. “You’ll do much better than her. I want you, Olivia Dunham. I want you to meet BOB.”

Olivia felt a chill crawl up her spine, but as Peter took a step forward and incited Cooper to raise his gun in warning, Olivia lowered her own weapon.

“Olivia, what the hell are you doing?” Peter cried.

She holstered her sidearm. “I’m going with him.”

Cooper laughed. “Just like a good little Special Agent,” he said as he beckoned for Olivia to come closer. When she was within reach, he pulled her to his side, pressing the barrel of his gun into her temple as he spun her around so her back was pressed into his chest. With his other hand, he unclipped her gun belt and let it drop to the step. Then he circled his arm across her shoulders and began to inch them both away from the cabin door, towards the woods.

“Olivia!” Peter called.

“I’m fine, Peter,” she said. “Your father will know what to do.”

Cooper tightened his grip across her shoulders; his strength was undeniable, and for the first time Olivia began to wonder if she’d made a mistake.

“One move: I shoot. You follow us: I shoot,” Cooper menaced. “Don’t test me.”

Olivia watched as Peter and Audrey stood helpless and panicked in the glow from the cabin. Cooper led her deeper into the woods, and she kept her eyes trained on their figures until she couldn’t see them any longer.

“Damn it!” Peter shouted, kicking a mound of snow and ice at his feet.

“Call your father,” Audrey suggested.

“And tell him what?” Peter hissed. “That Olivia’s been kidnapped? That I let an evil, possessed madman walk away with her?” 

“Yes.”

Peter remembered the device, the plug that Walter had asked for. He raced to the vehicle, parked down the driveway, and grabbed the radio in the front seat. Sheriff Truman was hollering over the radio for Olivia to pick up.

“Sheriff, it’s Peter—”

“Where in blazes are you, Bishop?!” Truman yelled. “What did you do with my truck?”

“No time to explain. Cooper took Olivia. They’re heading to the Grove, I’m sure of it. Meet us there. Bring Walter and backup. Lots of backup.”

Before he gave Truman a chance to argue, he shut dropped the radio handset and threw open the door. “Get in,” he instructed Audrey.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Peter revved the engine and threw the Jeep in gear. “Glastonbury Grove,” he said as he pealed around the end of the driveway and back down the slippery slope towards the highway.


	16. Chapter 16

They’d been walking for what felt like an hour, but Olivia knew where they were going, and she knew how long it would take to get there; she figured it couldn’t have actually been more than ten minutes. But her hands were frozen; the snow had stopped and the clouds had parted, leaving no cover to keep whatever heat was there from rising through the atmosphere instead of staying nearer the ground.

Behind her, Cooper shoved his gun into her shoulder blades, and Olivia stumbled over a rock, again, this time falling into the snow and striking her knee on something. She stifled her cry.

“Get up.”

“I can’t,” she gritted her teeth.

Cooper sighed and bent to retrieve her, lifting her up under her arms but keeping his gun pressed firmly into her rib cage.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked as she began to limp alongside him.

“Because its what must be done.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No,” he chuckled. “I suppose it wouldn’t.”

Olivia felt no warmth from his body; he smelled like the putrid oil from the stone circle, and she fought her gag reflex to keep herself from throwing up over the stench.

“We know who you are. And we know what you’ve done. We know where you live, and we know how to get there. We also know how to shut you down if we wanted to. And right now, I’m sure there are a dozen uniformed law enforcement agents waiting at Glastonbury Grove for us to show up,” she said. “You’re not going to win.”

The growl that emitted from Cooper’s throat sounded less human and more animal. She stood up straighter despite the pain it caused in her knee.

“In fact, I don’t even know why you’re trying. Because nothing you do is going to turn out in your favour—”

In an instant, Cooper had reached back with his gun and whipped her across the head with the butt end. She cried out and stumbled again, landing on her hands and knees in the snow.

Cooper suddenly bent down to her side. Olivia felt something change—there was a lightness to his presence that wasn’t there before. She felt a trickle of blood seep down the side of her face, but through the blinding pain she looked up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Agent Cooper,” she urged. “Stay with me.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Fight it.”

“I haven’t got the time. He’s stronger than you know…”

As soon as his words left his mouth, the heaviness returned and Olivia saw the handsome FBI Agent replaced by the dark soul wearing his skin.

“There’s more where that came from…” he hissed. “Get up.”

He pulled her up to his side and as she gained her feet, she jammed a knee into his midsection and knocked her closed fists into his back, knocking him to the snow. With the limited visibility, Olivia struggled to find her footing and took off through the trees.

Years of inaction and a lack of practice in the firing range had left him with less-than-perfect shooting skills, but being a one-time crack shot meant his less-than-perfect was still too close to perfect for comfort. The first bullet fired barely grazed her arm, and she shrugged it off; the one that took off past the outer part of her thigh nearly stopped her cold. Her whole leg felt like it was on fire. She ducked behind a tree and grabbed a handful of wet snow to press against her leg to constrict the blood flow and reduce bleeding. 

“Shit,” she swore under her breath, heart racing as she listened for the sound of Cooper’s approaching footfalls. The woods were eerily silent, save for the sudden and incessant hooting of an owl high above her in the trees. She hazarded a look skyward.

“Nice try, Agent Dunham,” Cooper growled in her ear. She felt the muzzle of his gun in the centre of her back. “I forgot how great it is to fight the FBI.”

“You said it yourself,” she breathed. “I’m not afraid of anything. And fear is what opens the door. Isn’t that right?”

Cooper stepped closer, lowering his face so his cold lips pressed against her ear. “I don’t need your fear. The nun gave us enough to last a lifetime.”

She grimaced in disgust but the pain in her leg was more than enough distraction for her to forget about the threatening tone and evil words before they’d had a chance to roost. Cooper reached around and, with a few quick flurries of movement with his free hand, undid the belt holding up her dress pants, ripped it free from the belt loops, and quickly lashed her hands together behind her back.

“If I didn’t need you so badly to finish what we’ve started, I’d kill you right now,” he fastened the belt buckle tightly. “But I so much want them to meet you…”

Olivia jerked away and Cooper laughed.

“Keep walking.”

Olivia did exactly as she was told.

They reached the circle of sycamores in less than one hundred feet. As it came into view, Olivia heard the sound of police sirens, the flashing red and blues casting eerie shadows through the trees as the cars approached. They were parking nearly exactly where Olivia had been shot.

“They know where we’re going,” Olivia said as she limped through the snow. Cooper’s hand was wedged between her arm and her body as he led her ahead of him. “They’ll follow the blood. This isn’t going to end well for you.”

“Idle threats,” Cooper intoned with a laugh as he pushed her into the tree circle.

Shouts from behind them were ignored by Cooper as he began muttering incoherently.

“There!” Olivia heard someone shout. “They’re in the Grove!”

“Olivia!” someone else chorused.

In front of her, Cooper began to tremble violently as his muttering stopped. She saw red curtains begin to materialize.

“Olivia!” came another voice, one that she recognized as Peter’s. She tried to turn her head, but her eyes were fixed—held, somehow—by the force emanating from the curtains. She heard them rush into the clearing, and out of the corner of her eye saw Sheriff Truman, Agent Horne, Deputies Brennan and Hawk, and a selection of state troopers, all with their guns drawn, fanning out in position around the sycamores but not daring to enter the circle itself.

“Hold your fire!” Truman shouted.

Peter continued to call her name, but Olivia was powerless to respond. Trancelike, she felt herself pulled towards a part in the curtain that appeared. Cooper grabbed her arm and pulled her forward.

Pliant as pulled taffy, Olivia allowed herself to be led between the folds and into the darkness. 

***

Audrey removed her coat and tossed it to the ground. “I’m going in.”

“Like hell!” Peter rushed to her side. Sheriff Truman holstered his weapon and came to her other side.

“I have to finish this,” she said. “You heard what Agent Dunham said: I was brought here for a reason. So was she. This begins and ends with us.”

“Seriously, Agent Horne, you have no idea what’s on the other side of that curtain, or how long it will stay open, or what you’re going to do when you get there,” he said.

“Audrey—” Truman put his hand on her shoulder. “What if you can’t get back?”

She shook her head, her eyes fixed on the curtain. “I guess I’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen, won’t I?”

Without another word, Audrey burst into the circle and walked towards the curtains. Before they knew what had happened, she had pulled back the drapery and was stepping through the gap, disappearing from view in almost the same instant as the curtains themselves dissipated, fog-like, from view.

“Goddamnit!” Truman yelled. “What the hell is with the FBI?!”

Peter felt his gun, heavy in his hand. “I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately…”

Around the other side of the circle, Deputy Brennan tried to make sense of what he’d witnessed, the cadence and tenor of his voice rising above the loud stillness of the woods as his confusion took over. Deputy Hawk tried to reassure him, but even his voice was shaky with disbelief.

Truman ran a hand over his face and turned to address everyone. “Settle in, fellas,” he told them. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

Peter heard Walter’s voice shouting through the trees, diverting his attention.

“Son!” he was calling. “Peter!”

The state troopers held him up at the perimeter of their circle, but Peter raced over through the snow to meet him. “It’s okay. He’s with me.”

Walter’s face was glowing. “I drove a police car here,” he beamed.

“That’s good Walter.”

“With the lights on and everything!” he said, clapping his hands together with glee. “Siren blaring. Goodness! Everyone should have the chance to do that once.”

He glanced around at the men standing there, some with their guns still drawn, and scanned their faces.

“Where’s Olivia? Agent Horne?” he asked.

Peter sighed and raised an exhausted hand in the general direction of where the curtains had been. “On the other side. The Black Lodge, or wherever it is.”

A look of pain and regret crossed his face. “Are they coming back?”

“I hope so,” Peter muttered.

Walter nodded, reaching into his pocket. “The plug arrived,” he said as he produced the small device.

“Do you think it will work?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know,” his father admitted. “If this were just a typical hole in the fabric between universes, I would have no question in my mind about its efficacy. This is very different from anything else we’ve ever seen or tested it on…”

Sheriff Truman ambled over. “I don’t know what kind of work you do, Doctor Bishop, but here you are talking about plugs and other universes and I’m gonna tell you that it is far from the craziest thing I’ve ever heard coming out of your corner of the law enforcement world,” he said. “So whatever that thing is, whatever it does, you’re going to use it.”

Walter nodded. “Of course, Sheriff.”

Peter nodded and yawned, then checked his watch. It was 9:17 pm. He leaned back against a tree and watched the circle, waiting, he supposed, for whatever it was that was going to happen.


	17. Chapter 17

Olivia stepped across the threshold and into a long, curtained hallway. Her leg had stopped bleeding; in fact, she noted, the bullet wound was no longer there. Neither was her belt binding her hands behind her back. Instinctively, she rubbed her wrists and began to walk down the hallway, running her hand along the curtain as she went.

At the far end, she noticed a part in the drapes where the fabric seemed to billow in a breeze she couldn’t feel. Her feet seemed to lead her to it without her conscious input. Another, protective instinct kicked in and she reached for her gun; when her hand hit nothing but the empty belt loop of her dress pants, she recalled—albeit distantly—having dropped her weapon in the snow sometime earlier. She couldn’t remember why or where she’d been when it happened. Her mind raced. Not having her sidearm worried her, but not as much as the gauzy half-remembrances she was struggling to bring to the fore. Her memory, her ability to recall even the most mundane details from her life, had vanished completely.

She shivered, shaking away her unease as she cautiously pulled the fabric apart, and peered into the room beyond.

It was, Olivia noted with little surprise, the same red room she had seen so often in her dreams. For a moment, Olivia wondered if perhaps she wasn’t actually dreaming; the thought gave her pause but didn’t deter her. The tiled floor zig-zagging across her field of vision and gave her an acute sense of vertigo; it seemed proof enough that she was actually there, in the room, inexplicable though it was.

She took the first tentative step into the cavernous space. Her shoes struck the floor with low, hollow thuds that seemed to ring out unnaturally beyond the space delineated by the red curtains. The chairs she remembered from her dream were arranged in front of her, but the room was empty.

Movement in the diagonally opposite corner drew Olivia’s attention, where she saw the figure of the little man step between folds in the curtain and begin walking towards her. Olivia studied him, all professional detachment disintegrating as her curiosity got the better of her. He half-walked, half-jerked, just like he did when he had appeared to be dancing in her dream, swishing his feet a little with each step.

When he reached the chair he sat down. He didn’t make eye contact until he was settled, fully; he clapped his hands together and grinned at her.

“Erofeb em nees ev’uoy,” he stated.

His disjointed speech—unintelligible in her dream—registered to Olivia. It wasn’t another language; it was backwards. He was speaking backwards.

“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, I’ve seen you before.”

The man smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Moor gnitiaw eht is siht.”

 _The waiting room_ …it was a phrase Olivia had heard before. “What are we waiting for?” she asked him.

The man was still grinning, and his eyes lolled around in his head as he squirmed in his seat. “Ereh era sdneirf ruoy of emos…”

“My friends…?” Olivia asked. But before she could get her answer, the room was pitched into darkness. A flashing strobe of light cut swaths of illumination across the floor and against the curtains; Olivia backed up until her hands touched the curtain, and she pushed her way back into the hallway she’d arrived in. Gripping the fabric in her fists, she shut them tightly and breathed, heavily, as she figured her next move.

Down at the other end of the hallway, Olivia heard what sounded like running water. Pulled by her investigative mind, she trod the few steps between where she stood and where she assumed the curtains would part again and grant her entrance. She dragged her hand along the curtain looking for the opening.

The second room was exactly like the first, in design and layout, save for a 13” television propped up haphazardly in one of the chairs. Its rabbit ear antennae sat askew, and static consequently filled the screen. There was no one in the room, to Olivia’s eye, and with the same tentative steps she had taken into the first room, she crept towards the television.

On the screen, through the static, Olivia thought she could make out the blurred images of a person. Intrigued, she stepped towards the box, intent on adjusting the antennae.

The moment her fingertips touched the first rod, the image snapped to clarity. She saw herself, from behind, reaching towards the television set.

Olivia spun around, looking for a camera behind and above her. All she could see were red curtains, from the floor to the ceiling.

Turning back to the screen, she saw the image had changed. In starkly contrasted black and white, Olivia could make out the distinct forms of three people, laying in half-melted snow. She could recognize them without thinking twice: Peter, Walter, and Sheriff Truman. In the distance, scores of sheriff’s deputies and state troopers, all laying in the snow. Eyes open and unmoving. Cold.

Dead.

Olivia stood up to her full height when she realized what she was witnessing, and as pieces of her memories of arriving at the red room flashed back to her. She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not real. None of this is real.”

The TV image changed again, right before her eyes. She realized she was staring at herself again, from behind; in the right third of the screen, she saw a figure materialize. Olivia gasped and spun to the corner the image had shown her, seeing the woman in the black dress, the one with the tormented white eyes and the banshee screams…

“Sgnihtyalp ym ekil uoy od?” the woman asked.

“Your playthings?” Olivia asked.

The woman grinned and waved her hands out over the floor in front of her, where three bodies materialized out of nowhere. Two of the women wore the same dress—a puffy sleeved, floral-printed design that fell out of fashion during the later part of the first Bush administration. Both women had clear stab wounds puncturing their ribcage, and bled from the corners of their lips. Olivia recognized the middle woman as Annie; she deduced without much else that the first woman was Caroline Earle, the wife of Agent Cooper’s insane former partner, the first woman to be murdered after getting too close to Cooper.

The third woman wore a pin-striped suit and a crimson red dress shirt that made it almost impossible to see the stab wound, located in the same place as the other two women. Blood flowed out of her mouth as well. Olivia recognized her quickly.

“Ereh era sdneirf ruoy of emos,” the woman intoned.

“That’s not Audrey,” Olivia said. “None of this is real. You’re not real. They’re not real.”

The woman in black curled her lips into a ferocious, grimacing smile and unleashed a scream as she lunged at Olivia. Again, driven by her instinct and years of training, Olivia reached for her gun; she only looked down at her hip for a split second before returning her eyes to the menacing figure advancing across the tiled floor, only to see that the scene had changed. Gone was the screaming woman in black, the three bodies, and the furniture in the room.

Olivia felt stinging in her arm and her mid-thigh. Her fingers were cold and she began to shiver. She glanced down at her leg and saw that she was bleeding again. The simple sight of the gaping hole in her pants, the blood soaking through the fabric and running down her leg, caused her to cry out with the sudden intensity of the pain she felt. It radiated throughout her body, and she weakened, from loss of blood and shock. On trembling legs, Olivia made her way as far as the first chair by the curtains before she fell to the tiled floor. Using what was left of her strength, she pulled herself the rest of the way, her bloodied, spasming leg dragging behind her, streaking the floor with her blood as she tried to reach the curtains.

Pushing aside the heavy drapes, she hurled herself at the hallway.

In an instant, the pain was gone. The blood was gone. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, calming herself with deep breaths. She pressed a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, fighting angry tears as she tried to wrap her head around what was happening to her.

“Ereh revo,” a voice called out. Olivia went silent, snapping her eyes open and scanning the area immediately around her for a clue as to the origin of the voice.

“Ereh revo.”

Climbing to her feet, Olivia paced the floor, walking the ten steps to the end of the hallway and the original room she had entered when she arrived. Pushing her way in, she saw that the furniture was gone, and the open space occupied by a single figure—the little man—who stood near the centre of the floor with his arm outstretched.

“Ti ekat,” he said.

Olivia took her time walking to meet him. As she approached, she made out the shape of the object the little man was offering her: it was a ring. Hammered metal, in rough shape, holding a large piece of dull emerald in its centre. The gemstone bore a symbol, carved into its face. None of it was remotely recognizable to her. She shook her head and stopped her advance.

“No,” Olivia refused.

“Ti ekat,” the little man menaced.

“I won’t,” she replied, taking a step back.

The little man’s fury was short-lived. He turned as he smiled, jerking his way backwards towards the curtain behind him as a bright white spotlight shone down from the ceiling. Olivia shielded her eyes, feeling the warmth from the light as she tried to move out of its beam.

“Agent Dunham?” another voice called out.

The light began to strobe, and in the flickering light, Olivia was positive she saw Agent Horne standing in the corner opposite her.

“Audrey!” she called.

“Behind you!” Audrey warned.

Olivia spun around, coming face-to-face with a man in head-to-toe denim, staring at her in the spasmodic light. Startled, Olivia took several steps back until she felt herself land against someone. Arms flew around her shoulders, holding her fast. She tried to step away, but the arms held her tightly.

“Olivia,” the man said, and she stopped her struggle. Turning around, she was surprised to see Agent Cooper standing there. His grip on her body loosened but his strong arms still encircled her protectively. She felt his hand between her shoulder blades, fingers splayed from scapula to scapula, warm and broad. For a moment, she hazarded to feel safe.

“Dale Cooper?” she asked.

“One and the same.”

“No,” another voice said, and Olivia spun to face a second Cooper, identical to the first, step across the room to stand on her other side. “I’m Dale Cooper.”

Olivia pulled herself out of the first Cooper’s arms and backed away from them both, positioning herself within eyesight of the two of them and the horrible man in denim.  
  
“Snoisiced elbirret.”

The denim man, she saw now, stood slightly hunched over the seated body of a suited man with wild eyes set in his grizzled, partially-shaven face. It was this seated man who spoke.

“?eb ot gniog ti s’ohw,” he asked. It was then she saw that his mouth moved but the voice didn’t seem to be coming from him. The denim man started to laugh maniacally, and Olivia turned back to the two Coopers, the dilemma in front of her finally making sense.

“Esoohc,” the seated man ordered. “Eid dna esoohc ro ,evil dna esoohc.”

Olivia carefully trod the floor, her eyes trained on the Coopers, making her way over to Audrey, who stood in the corner, her gun pointed towards the centre of the room.

“Audrey—” the first Cooper intoned.

“It’s me,” the second said.

Olivia searched the face of each Cooper, looking for clues as to which one was the real Dale, the good Dale. “We have to choose,” Olivia said.

“Choose what?” Audrey replied.

“Which one is real,” she said. “And which one is evil.”

Audrey kept her gun levelled at the two men, who hadn’t advanced but stood, pleadingly, with several feet between them. She, too, scoured each man’s face for a sign, something recognizable. She shook her head. “I can’t tell.”

“Audrey,” the first one continued. “It’s me. Your special agent.”

“Don’t listen to him, Audrey,” the second said.

They were indistinguishable from one another. Olivia fought the rising panic as the denim man began to laugh, and the seated man in front of him dropped his mouth open, puppet-like, amplifying the sound to horrible, ear-splitting levels.

Audrey’s hand started to shake. She struggled to keep the gun level. “Olivia—”

“Audrey,” the first Cooper pleaded with her, taking a step forward.

“Don’t!” she cried, gripping the gun with both hands in a renewed effort to keep it steady. “I’ll shoot. I swear, I’ll shoot.”

“Audrey,” the second Cooper intoned. “My palms are itchy, Audrey. Do you remember?”

The first Cooper’s face registered shock, and as his eyes flashed in anger, hazing over and becoming whitish around the irises, Audrey made her decision, aiming her gun at the first Cooper and pulling the trigger.

The pulsing strobe returned, and the first Cooper crumpled in a heap to the striped floor before being dragged away by forces unseen just as quickly. A burst of fire erupted from the corner the denim man and the seated man still occupied. His vicious shriek filled the room as he raged, gnashing his teeth and raising his arms skyward in anger.

The second Cooper dashed forward towards the two of them. “Go!” he ordered, pushing Olivia and Audrey back towards the curtain.

Olivia hazarded a glance behind her as she broke through. Lights flashed and the fire grew hotter, enveloping the denim man, the seated man, and the little man in an instant. The second Cooper, standing there behind her, came to her side, placing his hand in the small of her back to urge her out. Olivia met his eyes—sad and older, soulful, but green and grateful and very much alive.

“Dale,” she breathed.

“Let’s go,” he told her.

The feeling of cool blowing snow flecked against her skin was the last thing she remembered before she fell.


	18. Chapter 18

Olivia heard Peter calling her name as she climbed back into her consciousness. She was dimly aware of the fact that his were the arms that held her, her head propped in the crook of his arm as he sat behind her; without hearing his voice, she would have known from the faint scent of his deodorant or body wash or aftershave—No, Olivia, it can’t be aftershave…Peter’s face doesn’t regularly see the sharp end of a razor…—that she smelled all around her.

She took a deep, sighing breath of the cold mountain air and felt it sting her airway, and it was this pain that forced her eyes open and the rest of her senses to come back, alarmingly, and with enough force to make her gasp from the shock.

“Olivia,” Peter sighed, rocking her gently in his arms. “Are you okay?”

She thought about the question. “I don’t know.”

Peter waved his arms. “Can we get a medic over here?” he hollered.

“What happened?” she asked.

He sighed again and ran a hand through his hair, which was coated in a fine mist of melted snowflakes. “You just dropped here, out of nowhere, about thirty seconds ago. We saw curtains. Walter closed the portal—” he said, adding: “We think.”

Olivia grimaced as she tried to adjust her position in his arms. She recalled nothing. “Where was I?”

“We were kind of hoping you could tell us,” Peter said.

Olivia screwed up her face as a group of paramedics bustled quickly to her side and began assessing the gunshot wound to her leg. Gunshot…blood…Olivia remembered. “I was shot.”

“Yeah,” Peter said.

“Agent Cooper shot me.”

Peter nodded. Olivia shut her eyes, trying to remember more. The medic at her side poked a finger along the outer edge of the hole in her pants, and she sat bolt upright from the pain. As her eyes shot open, she saw Audrey, dazed rubbing her head as she leaned against Walter; between them both, laying on his stomach, was the black-suited body of Agent Cooper.

“Oh my god,” Olivia said, grabbing her head.

“What?” Peter asked. “What is it?”

Olivia began to cry. “We were there. In the red room. There were two Coopers. Audrey shot the bad one.”

“You mean—?”

Olivia didn’t let him finish. Using him for support, she pushed her way out of the grasp of the inept medic at her side and laboured to crawl across the frozen ground to Cooper’s side.

“Help me,” she said, and Peter scrambled to assist.

“Ma’am, you’re bleeding. You’re going to have to lie still—”

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me,” Olivia barked. “If you want to be helpful, get over here.”

She rolled Cooper’s body, leaning in to get leverage as Peter helped ease him around. She checked his pulse and breathing, and she searched his body for visible wounds. The medics finally moved into place, but as they prepared to check the same vital functions, Cooper’s eyes opened and he blinked, blearily, a handful of times as he took in his surroundings.

“Do you know where you are?” Olivia asked.

Cooper opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He tried again, closing his eyes and seeming to bring all his strength and focus to bear on the task of uttering a few simple words. In the end, with tears collecting in his eyes, he simply shook his head ‘No’ and tried to relax his body against the cold ground.

Olivia reached her hand out and gently stroked the side of his face in an effort to calm him.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she whispered. “Do you know what year it is?”

He shook his head again and swallowed. “I know you,” he told her, his voice a wisp, a puff of vaporous breath released into the Pacific Northwest air.

She nodded with a slight smile. “I’m Special Agent Olivia Dunham. I’m with the FBI,” she told him, brushing meltwater off of his forehead with her thumb, her hand still pressed against his cheek. “Are you Special Agent Dale Cooper?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

She looked up at Peter and opened her mouth to say something, but was silenced by the feel of Cooper’s hand covering hers, still pressed to the side of his face. She glanced at him.

“I can’t remember…” he said.

“You will,” she assured him. “You’ve been trapped between worlds for a long while. Give it time…”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he admitted, closing his eyes. “Audrey…Audrey was there. Where’s Audrey?” Panic filled his voice and he gripped Olivia’s hand and struggled to sit up.

“Ssh,” Olivia urged. Her leg throbbed at her side and she shifted position, allowing the medic who wanted to address the wound an opportunity to clean and dress it as best he could. 

At the sound of her name, Audrey—who had been coming to slowly at Walter’s side—sprang into action. She half-crawled, half-sprinted over the icy ground until she was at Cooper’s side.

“Agent Cooper,” she cried as she collapsed beside him. Olivia relinquished her role and sagged back, propping her hands against the ground behind her and locking her elbows. Peter moved around again, putting himself behind her. Olivia didn’t resist, letting him act as a backrest and leaning her head back until it rested against Peter’s shoulder.

He wrapped an arm around her, holding her steady as the medics cut through the fabric of her pants and dressed the gunshot wound. She was oblivious to the pain; her eyes were trained on the reunion happening in front of her eyes.

She watched as Audrey leaned over Cooper, the grey emergency blanket thrown around her shoulders by the medical team flapping with her movements as she danced her hands over his face and the front of his shirt. She was laughing and crying all at once.

“Audrey,” Cooper breathed. “Oh god, Audrey…”

“It’s okay,” she smiled through her tears, “It’s okay. You’re back. It’s all going to be okay.”

He closed his eyes and sighed, breathing in deep, gulping lungfuls of air as he tried, with great difficulty, to sit. “Audrey, I—” he choked, a look of horror and pain crossing his face as he finally sat upright. He blanched, every drop of colour draining from his face. “Oh, Audrey, the things I did…the things I did to you…I can remember—”

“No,” she shook her head. “It wasn’t you. I knew that. I knew it couldn’t have been you.”

He shook his head. “No, but I could see it happening,” he choked again, his face screwing up in an effort to hold back his emotion. He cleared his throat and shook his head slowly. “It was like I was watching a movie of it happening and I couldn’t do a thing…I saw you…Annie—” he sobbed. “Oh god!”

Audrey continued to shake her head before she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t resist, collapsing into her as he let go. “I knew it. I knew something was wrong, and I didn’t do anything.”

“But you did—”

“But not soon enough!”

He pulled back from her, holding her at arms’ length. “You’re grown up, Audrey,” he said. “And you’re on your own.”

“In the FBI,” she added.

He couldn’t help beam at her. “You saved my life,” he said.

“I guess that makes us even.”

Cooper nodded slowly. “Ten times over,” he said.

Audrey wasted no time sniffling back tears or wiping her eyes; she leaned in and kissed him, and for the first time since the exchange began, Olivia looked away.

The medic had finished her leg, but she barely noticed the pain or discomfort anymore. “I should get to a hospital,” she whispered to Peter.

“Yeah,” he said.

But they didn’t move for a long moment. Peter pressed a kiss to the crown of Olivia’s head, and she smiled, brushing his hand with hers.

“Thanks for waiting for me,” she told him.

“Where else would I be?” was Peter’s sincere reply.

The medical team helped Audrey and Cooper to their feet, and they leaned into one another as they made their way across the Grove to the police cars waiting for them. There were more reunions—Olivia saw hearty back slaps and smiles generously doled out by Sheriff Truman and his deputies—but Olivia focused on getting to her feet. She leaned into Peter, taking the weight off of her bad leg.

Walter took the opportunity to hurry to her side. “Agent Dunham, that man shot you,” he said, nodding to Agent Cooper.

Olivia shook her head. “No he didn’t.”

“But—?”

“Walter,” Olivia started. “There are more things in heaven and earth…”

Walter nodded, impatient. “Yes yes, well…”

Peter began to walk, slipping his arm around Olivia’s middle to support her as she walked. “Do you think it’s over?” he asked.

She shrugged, glancing back over her shoulder at the space around the circle of sycamores, where the curtains had been. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I know the alternate Cooper didn’t make it out. Neither did the man I presume was BOB. Apart from that—”

“Time will tell,” Peter offered.

Olivia nodded and smiled at him. “I suppose that will have to do for now.”

Walter began talking excitedly about how he fired the plug at the pool of engine oil the moment they saw the three missing FBI agents reappear on the ground, but Olivia wasn’t listening. From her vantage point, she could see Audrey and Cooper sitting side-by-side in the back of Truman’s Jeep. Talking or not talking, it didn’t matter; she could see they were holding hands. And something about the scene made her feel light again.

Peter helped her into one of the EMS vehicles parked on the icy slope leading up to the Grove. They eventually convoyed down the mountain, one vehicle after the other departing down the highway until there were no more lights shining on the Grove, and the inky black expanse of starry skies stretched above the canopy of trees was the only thing providing any source of light for whatever spirits may have still dwelt there…


	19. Chapter 19

Three Weeks Later   
Harvard University

Walter hurried over from the confines of his office, his coat flapping in the breeze generated by the speed of his approach. To Olivia, he looked like an addled superhero, billowing cape and all.

“Olivia,” he said. “I have a very important question for you, one which you must approach with all the consideration and professionalism that you would have if this were October of 1963 and you were in charge of the nuclear codes…”

Olivia looked up from the folder on the table and lifted an eyebrow, her concern and curiosity piqued. “What is it Walter?”

As he gained her side and pulled his hat down over his head, his voice conspiratorially low and urgent, he bubbled: “What flavour of ice cream would you like?”

She couldn’t help but laugh, loudly and long, as the absurdity of the scene hit home for her. Peter, strolling up behind Walter, clapped a hand on his father’s shoulder.

“You’re scaring the straights, Walter,” he said.

“What?” he asked. “It’s a very important question, Peter! One’s choice of ice cream flavour says so much about their personality. It’s not simply chocolate or vanilla!” he turned to Olivia. “This place has bubble gum! And red velvet! And—and mint chocolate chip cookie dough!”

Olivia smiled and shook her head; despite the calendar officially declaring the first day of spring, outside there was still a thick layer of snow covering the ground. “Walter, it’s freezing out there.”

“I know.”

“And you want ice cream?”

He looked at her as if the question itself was so absurd that it didn’t warrant an answer. "What does the outside ambient temperature have to do with my desire to eat ice cream?"

“He would not be deterred,” Peter threw a thin scarf around his neck. “Astrid asked for pistachio, Walter is gunning for Rocky Road, I’m leaning towards strawberry. So I guess the sixty-four thousand dollar question is: what does Olivia want?”

Olivia shut the folder, “Surprise me.”

Walter’s eyes lit up. “A true adventurer! Never afraid of the unknown! A risk-taker!” he beamed at Peter. “Our Olivia is quite the brave little FBI Agent.”

“I know,” Peter said as Walter began to walk towards the door to the lab. Olivia reached out and tucked in the ends of Peter’s scarf under the lapels of his coat.

She glanced up at him. “What?” she asked. “It’s cold out there.”

“I haven’t heard you laugh like that in a while,” he intoned.

She smoothed his collar down against his shoulders. “No?”

“It’s nice to hear.”

Olivia nodded. “Well, it felt good too.”

Peter nodded, catching her eyes. She slowed her movements, the smoothing of her hand across his chest, and he reached up to take her hand in his. He gave it a gentle squeeze, and Olivia smiled.

“Are you going to let him drive?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and looked toward the door with a sigh, gently dropping her hand in the space between them. “I’ll pick something delicious,” he smiled at her as he took off after his father. “You wanna come with?”

Olivia shrugged. “Nah, I wanna catch up on a few things. The peace and quiet will be nice.”

Peter nodded and waited for Astrid to join him at the door. “You sure?” she asked.

Olivia smiled. “Positive. Get outta here!”

Peter and Astrid made their way to the door, following Walter; Peter walked backwards, reading her face until he bumped into the door jamb and laughed, turning out into the hallway.

Olivia listened for their voices to fade away before she turned back to the table.

Her hand rested on the manila folder in front of her. It was her report, written two weeks earlier upon her return to Boston and the wrap-up of the case in Twin Peaks. In it, she had detailed her investigation and the methods used to bring about its conclusion; in the plainest terms possible, Olivia had laboured to tell the truth about clues hidden within her dreams, demonic possession, and the fact that she had traveled across an ethereal gateway to another dimension in order to solve the seemingly unrelated suspicious death of a poor woman who had been tangled up in something far greater and more evil than she could have possibly known.

 _Maybe_ _…_ _maybe not,_ Olivia thought as she traced her fingertip over Annie’s name in the file. Maybe she knew exactly what kind of evil lived there. She shivered. You were only there a week, and it permeated your soul…

With a sigh, Olivia pushed the file away and got up from her lab stool. Walking around the empty lab had become something of a pastime for her since her return. The solitude afforded by the industrial space, inhabited by the most technologically varied collection of instruments ever assembled in one place, was calming. It was a world she understood, however minimally, because it was one she was familiar with. And at a time when she didn’t know how long that would last, the small comforts she had previously taken for granted became monumentally imbued with significance.

Word had spread within various upper branches of the FBI, and response to the successful case had been enthusiastic, especially after the recovery of Agent Cooper—someone nobody at the Bureau, with few notable exceptions, had ever thought was missing—was confirmed, at which point the process of reinstatement to his old position was begun, at his request. Suddenly, interest in Gordon Cole’s investigations had been reignited, and Fringe Division was rumoured to be expanding to include new teams, focusing on some of the more esoteric Blue Rose cold cases.

But, however emboldened the Bureau might have been about her team’s success in Twin Peaks, Olivia was nervous. In the weeks since her return, she’d been unable to muster more than casual, cautious optimism about the proposed direction of the new Fringe division. She wasn’t prepared to go down any more rabbit holes she didn’t have to go down. But no one had stepped up to head any new branches. She worried about being pulled from the Harvard lab before she’d uncovered the rest of the truths she’d set out to uncover when she first learned about The Pattern.

And no matter how many times she traveled around the lab in her walks, she always circled back to those small comforts she knew she had come to expect, without which she wondered if she could live. Walter’s eccentricities—his containers of sweets stashed in every available nook and cranny of the lab, or the “Dad slippers” he had sitting under the old rolling chair in his office for those late nights that happened far more often than any of them could have imagined when they sighed up for the job—or the smiley face stickers Astrid had decorated her work computer console with, or the fact that Peter was always rearranging the food in the fridge so that the healthiest food was ingested first, whether his motives were to ensure the well-being of the rest of the team or to hoard the unhealthy stuff for himself. These were things she found herself wishing would never go away. Glancing around her at the odd collection of equipment, she realized how much it felt like home.

Even when it was empty.

She suddenly, very deeply, wished she had gone with them for ice cream; she missed them. All of them. And it was an awful feeling.

“Agent Dunham?”

Olivia spun around towards the door, startled at the intrusion. When she saw who was there, however, she shoved her hands into her pockets and chuckled.

“I never thought I’d actually see you two ‘round these parts,” she smiled, walking across the room.

“I haven’t been to Boston in years,” Agent Cooper said as he stepped across the threshold and into the lab. “Thought I’d stop up on my trip home.”

“And where’s home?” Olivia asked.

He grinned. “Philadelphia.”

Olivia nodded her head. “Boston’s a little out of the way, don’t you think?” she teased.

He shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

The sound of heels on tile announced Agent Horne’s approach long before she actually appeared in the doorway. “Sorry,” she said as she breezed through the entryway and came to stand beside Cooper. “It’s hard to find parking around here.”

Olivia nodded. “Well, when classes are in session—”

Audrey smiled, wasting no time in crossing the divide and enthusiastically shaking Olivia’s hand. “It’s good to see you, Agent Dunham.”

“Likewise,” Olivia beamed.

Cooper followed suit, reaching out to shake Olivia’s hand in greeting but changing his mind mid-stride and enveloping her in an embrace instead. “Agent Dunham, I—”

Olivia returned the embrace, lifting herself up on tiptoe to reach around his tall, broad shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay to say goodbye, but—” she pulled away with a shrug. “We didn’t have a lot of time before we had to be back here, and with you in the hospital, and so many people…”

He held up his hand to stop her. “I know,” he said. “And I understand. This job…” he trailed off with a sigh.

Olivia nodded in understanding. She sighed and took in the sight of them, so different than the last time they had all been together. Audrey hadn’t changed so much as relaxed; the tenseness in her jaw and the slope of her shoulders seemed to have disappeared, and she appeared more at ease. Happier. She smiled more quickly, broadly, and the practiced movements she made with her body—her gait, the way she combed her cropped hair behind her ear—seemed more fluid and poised instead of nervous and reactionary as it had been before.

But Cooper was a different man altogether. Olivia was still not clear on the specifics on his personal journey or what had taken place physically during the transfer of the one Cooper’s soul for the other. The ravages of twenty years on his earthly body under control of the evil doppelgänger—the greying hair lightening his temples, fine lines around his mouth—seemed to have been erased, or at the very least softened, at some point during the last month. He looked youthful, cutting a fine figure in his suit and tie, with his hair parted and combed exactly as it was in the photographs she’d seen of him in his personnel file.

Beyond that, there was life in his eyes that had been missing before. That, Olivia realized, what what she’d seen the moment before he pushed her through the curtains and into the snow on this side of the divide between the real world and the other…

Olivia smiled and broke away from her line of thought. “Well, welcome to Fringe Division’s creepiest hidden laboratory,” she said. “I guess it’s not so hidden, but—”

They were suddenly interrupted by the sound of footsteps and voices in the hallway, and the sudden eruption of Peter, Walter, and Astrid as they tumbled back into the lab.

“What kind of an ice cream store closes on the weekend?” Walter complained.

“The sign said the owners are getting married today,” Astrid replied. “They’re allowed to close their shop to get married.”

“But don’t they have employees?"

"Maybe they're at the wedding,"

"But who goes to their employers' wedding?"

Peter saw Olivia and his smile diminished slightly as he shrugged off his coat. “Best behaviour, Walter, Astrid. We have company.”

Olivia started introductions, watching as Peter’s eyes never strayed from her face. Astrid was over-the-moon to meet the people she had heard so much about. Walter, having accepted the very unscientific but only logical explanation for the change in Agent Cooper’s behaviour the previous month, reacted with warmth and joviality.

“I’ll make coffee!” he announced. “You do still like coffee, don’t you Agent Cooper?”

Cooper nodded. “There’s nothing in the world quite like a good cup, Doctor Bishop,” he said. “Especially if you pair it with a slice of cherry pie…”

“Astrid makes pie!” Walter cried as he agreed and busied himself on the other side of the lab near the bunsen burners.

“Use the coffee pot, Walter!” Astrid hurried after him.

Peter managed a small laugh as he shrugged off his coat.

“Agent Dunham was giving us a tour of the lab,” Audrey said, directing her comment at him. “It’s a fascinating space, Peter. Can you show me what you do here?”

Peter caught Olivia’s eyes, asking her without words if it was okay, if she would be fine on her own with Agent Cooper. Olivia nodded, and he and Audrey set off around the tables and benches, where Peter began explaining the nature of their work.

Olivia smiled at Cooper. “This wasn’t a social visit, was it Agent Cooper?”

He shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Not entirely.”

She nodded and glanced around the room. Walter and Astrid busying themselves at the coffee machine; Peter and Audrey discussing the finer points of Peter’s favourite lab equipment. She smiled, decisively. “Should we take our coffee for a walk?” she asked.

Cooper considered, but only briefly. “Okay,” he finally said with a smile.


	20. Chapter 20

They walked side by side, tracing slow paths along snowy sidewalks between the stately buildings of the Harvard campus. Their conversation was quiet, muted by their own desire to keep it private but also by the snow banks on either side of the walkway that deadened the sounds even more. 

Students filing past on either side of them, rushing to class, created a din that also masked the nature of their conversation from even the most prying ears. Olivia had to watch Cooper's lips to make sure she caught all of his words.

“I’m still not driving yet,” Cooper admitted. “The vertigo hasn’t quite abated, and I still have flashbacks, though they’re not as frequent or intense as they were at first.”

“Flashbacks?” Olivia asked.

“In a sense.” He took a sip from the metal thermos Astrid had put his coffee in. “Perhaps they’re more akin to panic attacks. Momentary lapses where I believe I’m still in the Red Room, that _this_ , all of this out here, is an illusion." He grew silent and sad. "Where I’m convinced that, at any moment, I’ll lose my grip on this reality and be pulled back to that one.”

“Like when we talked in the forest,” she said, remembering his words after he’d hit her with his gun on the way to the Grove. “It was you, wasn’t it? Coming through from the other side?”

He nodded. “I don’t know how I managed it, and I had little control over that ability. But yes, it was me,” he acknowledged. “I was always dimly aware of what he—me, the other me—was doing on the outside. Horrible things…”

She reached a gloved hand out and rested it on his arm. “It wasn’t you, though.”

“I know,” he replied. “But it doesn’t help to know that I was present, in some conscious capacity, in the moment when my double appeared to Annie and caused the fright that led to her death. Or that I saw myself attacking you and Audrey.” He shivered and closed his eyes. “They’re images I can’t erase, no matter how badly I may want to.”

Olivia nodded and drank from her coffee mug. “How do you reconcile the fact that there were two of you? That an imposter lived your life for twenty years?”

He shook his head. “I can’t yet,” he replied. “It’s an uncomfortable truth, a fact that it will take time to get used to, knowing that I missed so much,” he admitted. “And yet, I know things I shouldn’t rightly know, like the outcomes of the last handful of Presidential elections and the content of television channels that hadn’t been invented when I first crossed over. I know how to respond to emails, and access the Internet,” he reached into his pocket and produced a smartphone, bundled in a protective case. “I can use a cellular phone that fits in the palm of my hand,” he said. “It’s like I went to sleep and woke up in the future, and I’m not as out of sync with it as I thought I’d be.”

Cooper dropped his phone back into his pocket and took another sip of his coffee. “Audrey has been more than helpful. She’s patient with me,” he smiled. “When I first knew her, she was a naive but brave young woman, and I knew she had a bright future ahead of her. I never knew how intersected it would be with mine. It’s more than I could ever ask for. More than I probably deserve.”

“None of this was your fault,” Olivia hushed.

“I know,” he replied. “Rationally, I know that. But a part of me wonders—if only I’d done things differently back then…”

Lost in his thoughts, Cooper continued to walk for some time before talking again.

“The best guess anyone has right now is that, eventually, the memories of the two Dale Coopers will merge and blend, seamlessly, and the cognitive dissonance will resolve itself. Until then…”

He trailed off. They found a bench in a small quad, under the boughs of a large elm tree which had sheltered it from the brunt of the snowfall that cascaded over Massachusetts the night before. After brushing what little snow there was off the bench, Cooper and Olivia sat down side-by-side. A large group of straggling students hurried past them. Olivia watched as they ran down the sidewalk, hearing a distant buzzer sound in a building on the other side of the park. She sipped her coffee.

“I _am_ being reinstated,” he said with a half-smile. "Very happy about that."

“I’d heard about that,” she replied. “Congratulations.”

“That’s one reason why I came out east: to complete the physical and psychological evaluations,” he said.

“And the other reason?” she asked.

Cooper was silent for a long moment before replying. “Agent Broyles has asked me to head up the newest branch of Fringe Division,” he said. “He wants me to look into the other missing FBI Agents—Agent Desmond, Agent Jeffries—and get to the bottom of the civilian disappearances. Josie, Annie—” he coughed and looked down at his lap. “Apparently they’ve found other portals, possibly to the same place, all within a fifty mile radius of Twin Peaks. There’s even a Coeur d’Alene tribal elder who claims to have stabilized the gateway between the two worlds.”

Olivia nodded, a weight lifted off of her heart. “That’s fascinating,” she said. “I can’t think of another person more well-qualified to deal with the things we deal with—”

“I don’t know if I’m going to take it.”

Olivia whipped around to face him. “Really?”

He stared straight ahead for a long moment. “I won’t lie, the prospect of getting answers to those questions is enticing. But after everything…I don’t know if I am as effective as they may want me to be. And if I’m weak—susceptible, somehow, to what lies on the other side, because of my history or my abilities and predilections—I could end up putting more people in danger. I don’t think I’m prepared to risk that again.”

Olivia thought about the drive forward that she’d experienced in the wake of her discovery that she’d been a part of Walter’s and William Bell’s cortexiphan trials, and the way she’d also felt hemmed in and helpless by the realization that the past she’d had no control over was directly influencing her present. She could certainly relate to everything else Agent Cooper was telling her.

“Will Agent Horne join you?” she asked.

“She’s requested it,” he replied, pausing and rolling his coffee mug in his hands. “Agent Dunham, does the FBI still frown on interpersonal relationships between agents?”

Olivia smirked. “You mean you and Agent Horne?”

He tried to hide his blush, but Olivia saw through it. She laughed and returned her gaze to her own coffee cup.

Cooper chuckled. “I’m not overly fond of the idea—us working together so closely, considering…but then there are times...she’s a beautiful woman, so bright and intelligent, and a highly capable agent with more active years in the Bureau than I have.” He paused, taking a long, deliberate breath. “She’s so much more than the girl I knew, and yet I can’t for the life of me stop seeing her as eighteen…”

“She is, Cooper,” Olivia nodded. “But if you want to know the truth, I think you’d have a really hard time keeping her from your life now that she has you back in hers. Whether as friends or something more...I don't think you'll be able to push her away so easily.”

He perked up at the hint of a suggestion that Audrey felt the same about him as he felt about her and it struck her then that it was entirely possible that he had no idea the extent, breadth, and depth of her attachment to him.  _But that's a conversation for another time_ , she reasoned.

The steam rising from her coffee mug hit her chin and tickled the inside of her nose as Olivia leaned over the cup and rested her elbows on her knees. “You want my opinion?” she asked. “I can’t tell you what to do, Agent Cooper. All I can say is that, if you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to rest until you have answers, all of them.” She turned her head to look at him. “I know things and have seen things during my time with Fringe that I wish I didn’t have to know about. But I couldn’t go ride the pine in Counter-Terrorism or Organized Crime, you know? Not now. Not before I’m finished.”

Cooper mimicked her posture, leaning over his own coffee thermos.

“You’re not done yet, are you?” she asked.

It took a long moment before he shook his head. "There are answers out there that I think I need to find, Agent Dunham. One way or another." He shrugged. "I just don't know where to start."

“It’ll get easier,” she said. “And you’ll never be alone. Not as long as our lab is open, and with Agent Horne—”

He laughed. “I don’t supposed I could convince _you_ to defect, could I?” he asked, before shaking his head and taking back his question. “No. You’re happy here, with Doctor Bishop, with Peter…”

She nodded, slowly, as she smiled. “Besides, you wouldn’t want me,” she joked.

“Don’t be so sure,” he told her. “You’re very special, Olivia.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”

“No, don't diminish this. You had dreams,” he told her. “Dreams like I had before I first arrived in Twin Peaks. It was how I was able to find you, how you knew to go to Twin Peaks.”

Olivia squished her toe into a pile of slushy snow. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “I met Agent Horne years ago. She was the one who got the ball rolling.”

“Audrey had dreams too. An intuition.” Cooper told her. “She knew, the way that you knew. Of course she didn’t _know_ she knew, but…”

Olivia felt tears in her eyes. What he was saying made a whole lot of sense; a few years ago she never would have believed in any of it, but now, after everything she’d seen, none of this sounded in the slightest bit insane.

Still...

She sniffed and ran a her hand underneath the tip of her nose, then leaned back against the bench. “Peter and Walter, Astrid—we’re on to something, and we’re getting closer every day. It’s huge. I can’t just walk away from it.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to. And I wouldn’t expect you to leave them behind, either.” He paused and smiled, resting a warm hand on her knee. “But you have a gift, Olivia,” he said. “And if I move into Fringe Division and reopen the Blue Rose Cases…I promise you, I won’t rest until I win you over to our team."

Olivia laughed.

"So when you've got the answers you're seeking, give me a call. I'll have a whole new set of questions for you to start with.”

“Okay,” she smiled at him. “Okay, Agent Cooper. It’s a deal." 

He smile. “Aces,” he said.

They walked back along the now-empty sidewalks to the lab, where Audrey and Peter were waiting.

“There’s my Special Agent,” Audrey cooed as she walked across the slick sidewalks to Cooper’s side.

“In the flesh,” Cooper replied.

Audrey sighed. “I’ll never get tired of hearing you say that,” she half-whispered, and Cooper smiled at her, and then Olivia.

Goodbyes were said, and the two visiting agents walked off towards the parking lot where Audrey had left the car. Olivia waited until the retreating figures were specks against the bright whiteness of the snow-covered campus.

“Did you have a good talk?” Peter asked.

“Yeah,” Olivia said finally, turning to face him. “Yeah. It was good.”

“You’re leaving us, aren’t you?” Peter blurted out.

“What?” Olivia choked. “Peter, why would you—”

“Because,” he said. “I know that they’re expanding Fringe Division and they need someone qualified to head up the new department, but without you here we—my father—the team—”

“Peter,” Olivia grinned. “Agent Cooper is going to head up the new department. He and Agent Horne. They’re taking over the old Blue Rose cases.”

Stunned, Peter narrowed his eyes. “They are?”

“Yes,” she said with a shrug. “He asked me to go with him. But for some crazy reason, I told him I couldn’t quite leave you guys just yet.” 

Peter laughed, casting his eyes off in the direction Audrey and Cooper had left. “So you’re not madly in love with him?”

Olivia was taken aback. "God, Peter. No.” She shook her head. "He only has eyes for Audrey anyway."

He let out another chuckle, then reached for Olivia’s hand. “I’m really glad. I just thought you should know that.”

She squeezed his cold fingertips and shared a smile, but as he started to lead her back into the lab, she cocked her head to the other side. “You wanna grab a drink?” she asked.

“Sure,” Peter considered. “What are you thinking?”

She shrugged. “Anything but coffee,” she said. “I’ve had my fill…”


End file.
